{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_20654/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_20654","id":"gutenberg_20654","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20654","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Psychiatry/Psychology","Psychoanalysis","Sex","Subconsciousness"],"text":"E-text prepared by Michael Ciesielski, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Project\nGutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/c/)\n\n\n\nFANTASIA OF THE UNCONSCIOUS\n\nby\n\nD. H. LAWRENCE\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNew York\nThomas Seltzer\n1922\nCopyright, 1922, by\nThomas Seltzer, Inc.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nCHAPTER\n\n         FOREWORD\n\n     I.  INTRODUCTION\n\n    II.  THE HOLY FAMILY\n\n   III.  PLEXUSES, PLANES AND SO ON\n\n    IV.  TREES AND BABIES AND PAPAS AND MAMAS\n\n     V.  THE FIVE SENSES\n\n    VI.  FIRST GLIMMERINGS OF MIND\n\n   VII.  FIRST STEPS IN EDUCATION\n\n  VIII.  EDUCATION AND SEX IN MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD\n\n    IX.  THE BIRTH OF SEX\n\n     X.  PARENT LOVE\n\n    XI.  THE VICIOUS CIRCLE\n\n   XII.  LITANY OF EXHORTATIONS\n\n  XIII.  COSMOLOGICAL\n\n   XIV.  SLEEP AND DREAMS\n\n    XV.  THE LOWER SELF\n\n         EPILOGUE\n\n\n\n\n\nFOREWORD\n\n\nThe present book is a continuation from \"Psychoanalysis and the\nUnconscious.\" The generality of readers had better just leave it\nalone. The generality of critics likewise. I really don't want to\nconvince anybody. It is quite in opposition to my whole nature. I\ndon't intend my books for the generality of readers. I count it a\nmistake of our mistaken democracy, that every man who can read print\nis allowed to believe that he can read all that is printed. I count it\na misfortune that serious books are exposed in the public market, like\nslaves exposed naked for sale. But there we are, since we live in an\nage of mistaken democracy, we must go through with it.\n\nI warn the generality of readers, that this present book will seem to\nthem only a rather more revolting mass of wordy nonsense than the\nlast. I would warn the generality of critics to throw it in the waste\npaper basket without more ado.\n\nAs for the limited few, in whom one must perforce find an answerer, I\nmay as well say straight off that I stick to the solar plexus. That\nstatement alone, I hope, will thin their numbers considerably.\n\nFinally, to the remnants of a remainder, in order to apologize for the\nsudden lurch into cosmology, or cosmogony, in this book, I wish to say\nthat the whole thing hangs inevitably together. I am not a scientist.\nI am an amateur of amateurs. As one of my critics said, you either\nbelieve or you don't.\n\nI am not a proper archaeologist nor an anthropologist nor an\nethnologist. I am no \"scholar\" of any sort. But I am very grateful to\nscholars for their sound work. I have found hints, suggestions for\nwhat I say here in all kinds of scholarly books, from the Yoga and\nPlato and St. John the Evangel and the early Greek philosophers like\nHerakleitos down to Fraser and his \"Golden Bough,\" and even Freud and\nFrobenius. Even then I only remember hints--and I proceed by\nintuition. This leaves you quite free to dismiss the whole wordy mass\nof revolting nonsense, without a qualm.\n\nOnly let me say, that to my mind there is a great field of science\nwhich is as yet quite closed to us. I refer to the science which\nproceeds in terms of life and is established on data of living\nexperience and of sure intuition. Call it subjective science if you\nlike. Our objective science of modern knowledge concerns itself only\nwith phenomena, and with phenomena as regarded in their\ncause-and-effect relationship. I have nothing to say against our\nscience. It is perfect as far as it goes. But to regard it as\nexhausting the whole scope of human possibility in knowledge seems to\nme just puerile. Our science is a science of the dead world. Even\nbiology never considers life, but only mechanistic functioning and\napparatus of life.\n\nI honestly think that the great pagan world of which Egypt and Greece\nwere the last living terms, the great pagan world which preceded our\nown era once, had a vast and perhaps perfect science of its own, a\nscience in terms of life. In our era this science crumbled into magic\nand charlatanry. But even wisdom crumbles.\n\nI believe that this great science previous to ours and quite different\nin constitution and nature from our science once was universal,\nestablished all over the then-existing globe. I believe it was\nesoteric, invested in a large priesthood. Just as mathematics and\nmechanics and physics are defined and expounded in the same way in\nthe universities of China or Bolivia or London or Moscow to-day, so,\nit seems to me, in the great world previous to ours a great science\nand cosmology were taught esoterically in all countries of the globe,\nAsia, Polynesia, America, Atlantis and Europe. Belt's suggestion of\nthe geographical nature of this previous world seems to me most\ninteresting. In the period which geologists call the Glacial Period,\nthe waters of the earth must have been gathered up in a vast body on\nthe higher places of our globe, vast worlds of ice. And the sea-beds\nof to-day must have been comparatively dry. So that the Azores rose up\nmountainous from the plain of Atlantis, where the Atlantic now washes,\nand the Easter Isles and the Marquesas and the rest rose lofty from\nthe marvelous great continent of the Pacific.\n\nIn that world men lived and taught and knew, and were in one complete\ncorrespondence over all the earth. Men wandered back and forth from\nAtlantis to the Polynesian Continent as men now sail from Europe to\nAmerica. The interchange was complete, and knowledge, science was\nuniversal over the earth, cosmopolitan as it is to-day.\n\nThen came the melting of the glaciers, and the world flood. The\nrefugees from the drowned continents fled to the high places of\nAmerica, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Isles. And some degenerated\nnaturally into cave men, neolithic and paleolithic creatures, and some\nretained their marvelous innate beauty and life-perfection, as the\nSouth Sea Islanders, and some wandered savage in Africa, and some,\nlike Druids or Etruscans or Chaldeans or Amerindians or Chinese,\nrefused to forget, but taught the old wisdom, only in its\nhalf-forgotten, symbolic forms. More or less forgotten, as knowledge:\nremembered as ritual, gesture, and myth-story.\n\nAnd so, the intense potency of symbols is part at least memory. And so\nit is that all the great symbols and myths which dominate the world\nwhen our history first begins, are very much the same in every country\nand every people, the great myths all relate to one another. And so it\nis that these myths now begin to hypnotize us again, our own impulse\ntowards our own scientific way of understanding being almost spent.\nAnd so, besides myths, we find the same mathematic figures, cosmic\ngraphs which remain among the aboriginal peoples in all continents,\nmystic figures and signs whose true cosmic or scientific significance\nis lost, yet which continue in use for purposes of conjuring or\ndivining.\n\nIf my reader finds this bosh and abracadabra, all right for him. Only\nI have no more regard for his little crowings on his own little\ndunghill. Myself, I am not so sure that I am one of the\none-and-onlies. I like the wide world of centuries and vast\nages--mammoth worlds beyond our day, and mankind so wonderful in his\ndistances, his history that has no beginning yet always the pomp and\nthe magnificence of human splendor unfolding through the earth's\nchanging periods. Floods and fire and convulsions and ice-arrest\nintervene between the great glamorous civilizations of mankind. But\nnothing will ever quench humanity and the human potentiality to evolve\nsomething magnificent out of a renewed chaos.\n\nI do not believe in evolution, but in the strangeness and\nrainbow-change of ever-renewed creative civilizations.\n\nSo much, then, for my claim to remarkable discoveries. I believe I am\nonly trying to stammer out the first terms of a forgotten knowledge.\nBut I have no desire to revive dead kings, or dead sages. It is not\nfor me to arrange fossils, and decipher hieroglyphic phrases. I\ncouldn't do it if I wanted to. But then I can do something else. The\nsoul must take the hint from the relics our scientists have so\nmarvelously gathered out of the forgotten past, and from the hint\ndevelop a new living utterance. The spark is from dead wisdom, but the\nfire is life.\n\nAnd as an example--a very simple one--of how a scientist of the most\ninnocent modern sort may hint at truths which, when stated, he would\nlaugh at as fantastic nonsense, let us quote a word from the already\nold-fashioned \"Golden Bough.\" \"It must have appeared to the ancient\nAryan that the sun was periodically recruited from the fire which\nresided in the sacred oak.\"\n\nExactly. The fire which resided in the Tree of Life. That is, life\nitself. So we must read: \"It must have appeared to the ancient Aryan\nthat the sun was periodically recruited from life.\"--Which is what the\nearly Greek philosophers were always saying. And which still seems to\nme the real truth, the clue to the cosmos. Instead of life being drawn\nfrom the sun, it is the emanation from life itself, that is, from all\nthe living plants and creatures which nourish the sun.\n\nOf course, my dear critic, the ancient Aryans were just doddering--the\nold duffers: or babbling, the babes. But as for me, I have some\nrespect for my ancestors, and believe they had more up their sleeve\nthan just the marvel of the unborn me.\n\nOne last weary little word. This pseudo-philosophy of\nmine--\"pollyanalytics,\" as one of my respected critics might say--is\ndeduced from the novels and poems, not the reverse. The novels and poems\ncome unwatched out of one's pen. And then the absolute need which one has\nfor some sort of satisfactory mental attitude towards oneself and things in\ngeneral makes one try to abstract some definite conclusions from one's\nexperiences as a writer and as a man. The novels and poems are pure\npassionate experience. These \"pollyanalytics\" are inferences made\nafterwards, from the experience.\n\nAnd finally, it seems to me that even art is utterly dependent on\nphilosophy: or if you prefer it, on a metaphysic. The metaphysic or\nphilosophy may not be anywhere very accurately stated and may be quite\nunconscious, in the artist, yet it is a metaphysic that governs men at\nthe time, and is by all men more or less comprehended, and lived. Men\nlive and see according to some gradually developing and gradually\nwithering vision. This vision exists also as a dynamic idea or\nmetaphysic--exists first as such. Then it is unfolded into life and\nart. Our vision, our belief, our metaphysic is wearing woefully thin,\nand the art is wearing absolutely threadbare. We have no future;\nneither for our hopes nor our aims nor our art. It has all gone gray\nand opaque.\n\nWe've got to rip the old veil of a vision across, and find what the\nheart really believes in, after all: and what the heart really wants,\nfor the next future. And we've got to put it down in terms of belief\nand of knowledge. And then go forward again, to the fulfillment in\nlife and art.\n\nRip the veil of the old vision across, and walk through the rent. And\nif I try to do this--well, why not? If I try to write down what I\nsee--why not? If a publisher likes to print the book--all right. And\nif anybody wants to read it, let him. But why anybody should read one\nsingle word if he doesn't want to, I don't see. Unless of course he is\na critic who needs to scribble a dollar's worth of words, no matter\nhow.\n\nTAORMINA\n\nOctober 8, 1921\n\n\n\n\nFANTASIA OF THE UNCONSCIOUS\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n\nLet us start by making a little apology to Psychoanalysis. It wasn't\nfair to jeer at the psychoanalytic unconscious; or perhaps it _was_\nfair to jeer at the psychoanalytic unconscious, which is truly a\nnegative quantity and an unpleasant menagerie. What was really not\nfair was to jeer at Psychoanalysis as if Freud had invented and\ndescribed nothing but an unconscious, in all his theory.\n\nThe unconscious is not, of course, the clue to the Freudian theory.\nThe real clue is sex. A sexual motive is to be attributed to all human\nactivity.\n\nNow this is going too far. We are bound to admit than an element of\nsex enters into all human activity. But so does an element of greed,\nand of many other things. We are bound to admit that into all human\nrelationships, particularly adult human relationships, a large\nelement of sex enters. We are thankful that Freud has insisted on\nthis. We are thankful that Freud pulled us somewhat to earth, out of\nall our clouds of superfineness. What Freud says is always _partly_\ntrue. And half a loaf is better than no bread.\n\nBut really, there is the other half of the loaf. All is _not_ sex. And\na sexual motive is _not_ to be attributed to all human activities. We\nknow it, without need to argue.\n\nSex surely has a specific meaning. Sex means the being divided into\nmale and female; and the magnetic desire or impulse which puts male\napart from female, in a negative or sundering magnetism, but which\nalso draws male and female together in a long and infinitely varied\napproach towards the critical act of coition. Sex without the\nconsummating act of coition is never quite sex, in human\nrelationships: just as a eunuch is never quite a man. That is to say,\nthe act of coition is the essential clue to sex.\n\nNow does all life work up to the one consummating act of coition? In\none direction, it does, and it would be better if psychoanalysis\nplainly said so. In one direction, all life works up to the one\nsupreme moment of coition. Let us all admit it, sincerely.\n\nBut we are not confined to one direction only, or to one exclusive\nconsummation. Was the building of the cathedrals a working up towards\nthe act of coition? Was the dynamic impulse sexual? No. The sexual\nelement was present, and important. But not predominant. The same in\nthe building of the Panama Canal. The sexual impulse, in its widest\nform, was a very great impulse towards the building of the Panama\nCanal. But there was something else, of even higher importance, and\ngreater dynamic power.\n\nAnd what is this other, greater impulse? It is the desire of the human\nmale to build a world: not \"to build a world for you, dear\"; but to\nbuild up out of his own self and his own belief and his own effort\nsomething wonderful. Not merely something useful. Something wonderful.\nEven the Panama Canal would never have been built _simply_ to let\nships through. It is the pure disinterested craving of the human male\nto make something wonderful, out of his own head and his own self, and\nhis own soul's faith and delight, which starts everything going. This\nis the prime motivity. And the motivity of sex is subsidiary to this:\noften directly antagonistic.\n\nThat is, the essentially religious or creative motive is the first\nmotive for all human activity. The sexual motive comes second. And\nthere is a great conflict between the interests of the two, at all\ntimes.\n\nWhat we want to do, is to trace the creative or religious motive to\nits source in the human being, keeping in mind always the near\nrelationship between the religious motive and the sexual. The two\ngreat impulses are like man and wife, or father and son. It is no use\nputting one under the feet of the other.\n\nThe great desire to-day is to deny the religious impulse altogether,\nor else to assert its absolute alienity from the sexual impulse. The\northodox religious world says faugh! to sex. Whereupon we thank Freud\nfor giving them tit for tat. But the orthodox scientific world says\nfie! to the religious impulse. The scientist wants to discover a cause\nfor everything. And there is no cause for the religious impulse. Freud\nis with the scientists. Jung dodges from his university gown into a\npriest's surplice till we don't know where we are. We prefer Freud's\n_Sex_ to Jung's _Libido_ or Bergson's _Elan Vital_. Sex has at least\n_some_ definite reference, though when Freud makes sex accountable for\neverything he as good as makes it accountable for nothing.\n\nWe refuse any _Cause_, whether it be Sex or Libido or Elan Vital or\nether or unit of force or _perpetuum mobile_ or anything else. But\nalso we feel that we cannot, like Moses, perish on the top of our\npresent ideal Pisgah, or take the next step into thin air. There we\nare, at the top of our Pisgah of ideals, crying _Excelsior_ and trying\nto clamber up into the clouds: that is, if we are idealists with the\nreligious impulse rampant in our breasts. If we are scientists we\npractice aeroplane flying or eugenics or disarmament or something\nequally absurd.\n\nThe promised land, if it be anywhere, lies away beneath our feet. No\nmore prancing upwards. No more uplift. No more little Excelsiors\ncrying world-brotherhood and international love and Leagues of\nNations. Idealism and materialism amount to the same thing on top of\nPisgah, and the space is _very_ crowded. We're all cornered on our\nmountain top, climbing up one another and standing on one another's\nfaces in our scream of Excelsior.\n\nTo your tents, O Israel! Brethren, let us go down. We will descend.\nThe way to our precious Canaan lies obviously downhill. An end of\nuplift. Downhill to the land of milk and honey. The blood will soon be\nflowing faster than either, but we can't help that. We can't help it\nif Canaan has blood in its veins, instead of pure milk and honey.\n\nIf it is a question of origins, the origin is always the same,\nwhatever we say about it. So is the cause. Let that be a comfort to\nus. If we want to talk about God, well, we can please ourselves. God\nhas been talked about quite a lot, and He doesn't seem to mind. Why we\nshould take it so personally is a problem. Likewise if we wish to have\na tea party with the atom, let us: or with the wriggling little unit\nof energy, or the ether, or the Libido, or the Elan Vital, or any\nother Cause. Only don't let us have sex for tea. We've all got too\nmuch of it under the table; and really, for my part, I prefer to keep\nmine there, no matter what the Freudians say about me.\n\nBut it is tiring to go to any more tea parties with the Origin, or the\nCause, or even the Lord. Let us pronounce the mystic Om, from the pit\nof the stomach, and proceed.\n\nThere's not a shadow of doubt about it, the First Cause is just\nunknowable to us, and we'd be sorry if it wasn't. Whether it's God or\nthe Atom. All I say is Om!\n\nThe first business of every faith is to declare its ignorance. I don't\nknow where I come from--nor where I exit to. I don't know the origins\nof life nor the goal of death. I don't know how the two parent cells\nwhich are my biological origin became the me which I am. I don't in\nthe least know what those two parent cells were. The chemical analysis\nis just a farce, and my father and mother were just vehicles. And yet,\nI must say, since I've got to know about the two cells, I'm glad I do\nknow.\n\nThe Moses of Science and the Aaron of Idealism have got the whole\nbunch of us here on top of Pisgah. It's a tight squeeze, and we'll be\nfalling very, very foul of one another in five minutes, unless some of\nus climb down. But before leaving our eminence let us have a look\nround, and get our bearings.\n\nThey say that way lies the New Jerusalem of universal love: and over\nthere the happy valley of indulgent Pragmatism: and there, quite near, is\nthe chirpy land of the Vitalists: and in those dark groves the home of\nsuccessful Analysis, surnamed Psycho: and over those blue hills the\nSupermen are prancing about, though you can't see them. And there is\nBesantheim, and there is Eddyhowe, and there, on that queer little\ntableland, is Wilsonia, and just round the corner is Rabindranathopolis....\n\nBut Lord, I can't see anything. Help me, heaven, to a telescope, for I\nsee blank nothing.\n\nI'm not going to try any more. I'm going to sit down on my posterior\nand sluther full speed down this Pisgah, even if it cost me my trouser\nseat. So ho!--away we go.\n\nIn the beginning--there never was any beginning, but let it pass.\nWe've got to make a start somehow. In the very beginning of all\nthings, time and space and cosmos and being, in the beginning of all\nthese was a little living creature. But I don't know even if it was\nlittle. In the beginning was a living creature, its plasm quivering\nand its life-pulse throbbing. This little creature died, as little\ncreatures always do. But not before it had had young ones. When the\ndaddy creature died, it fell to pieces. And that was the beginning of\nthe cosmos. Its little body fell down to a speck of dust, which the\nyoung ones clung to because they must cling to something. Its little\nbreath flew asunder, the hotness and brightness of the little beast--I\nbeg your pardon, I mean the radiant energy from the corpse flew away\nto the right hand, and seemed to shine warm in the air, while the\nclammy energy from the body flew away to the left hand, and seemed\ndark and cold. And so, the first little master was dead and done for,\nand instead of his little living body there was a speck of dust in the\nmiddle, which became the earth, and on the right hand was a brightness\nwhich became the sun, rampaging with all the energy that had come out\nof the dead little master, and on the left hand a darkness which felt\nlike an unrisen moon. And that was how the Lord created the world.\nExcept that I know nothing about the Lord, so I shouldn't mention it.\n\nBut I forgot the soul of the little master. It probably did a bit of\nflying as well--and then came back to the young ones. It seems most\nnatural that way.\n\nWhich is my account of the Creation. And I mean by it, that Life is\nnot and never was anything but living creatures. That's what life is\nand will be just living creatures, no matter how large you make the\ncapital L. Out of living creatures the material cosmos was made: out\nof the death of living creatures, when their little living bodies fell\ndead and fell asunder into all sorts of matter and forces and\nenergies, sun, moons, stars and worlds. So you got the universe. Where\nyou got the living creature from, that first one, don't ask me. He was\njust there. But he was a little person with a soul of his own. He\nwasn't Life with a capital L.\n\nIf you don't believe me, then don't. I'll even give you a little song\nto sing.\n\n    \"If it be not true to me\n    What care I how true it be . .\"\n\nThat's the kind of man I really like, chirping his insouciance. And I\nchirp back:\n\n    \"Though it be not true to thee\n    It's gay and gospel truth to me. . .\"\n\nThe living live, and then die. They pass away, as we know, to dust and\nto oxygen and nitrogen and so on. But what we don't know, and what we\nmight perhaps know a little more, is how they pass away direct into\nlife itself--that is, direct into the living. That is, how many dead\nsouls fly over our untidiness like swallows and build under the eaves\nof the living. How many dead souls, like swallows, twitter and breed\nthoughts and instincts under the thatch of my hair and the eaves of my\nforehead, I don't know. But I believe a good many. And I hope they\nhave a good time. And I hope not too many are bats.\n\nI am sorry to say I believe in the souls of the dead. I am almost\nashamed to say, that I believe the souls of the dead in some way\nreenter and pervade the souls of the living: so that life is always\nthe life of living creatures, and death is always our affair. This\nbit, I admit, is bordering on mysticism. I'm sorry, because I don't\nlike mysticism. It has no trousers and no trousers seat: _n'a pas de\nquoi_. And I should feel so uncomfortable if I put my hand behind me\nand felt an absolute blank.\n\nMeanwhile a long, thin, brown caterpillar keeps on pretending to be a\ndead thin beech-twig, on a little bough at my feet. He had got his\nhind feet and his fore feet on the twig, and his body looped up like\nan arch in the air between, when a fly walked up the twig and began to\nmount the arch of the imitator, not having the least idea that it was\non a gentleman's coat-tails. The caterpillar shook his stern, and the\nfly made off as if it had seen a ghost. The dead twig and the live\ntwig now remain equally motionless, enjoying their different ways. And\nwhen, with this very pencil, I push the head of the caterpillar off\nfrom the twig, he remains on his tail, arched forward in air, and\noscillating unhappily, like some tiny pendulum ticking. Ticking,\nticking in mid-air, arched away from his planted tail. Till at last,\nafter a long minute and a half, he touches the twig again, and\nsubsides into twigginess. The only thing is, the dead beech-twig can't\npretend to be a wagging caterpillar. Yet how the two commune!\nHowever--we have our exits and our entrances, and one man in his time\nplays many parts. More than he dreams of, poor darling. And I am\nentirely at a loss for a moral!\n\nWell, then, we are born. I suppose that's a safe statement. And we\nbecome at once conscious, if we weren't so before. _Nem con._ And our\nlittle baby body is a little functioning organism, a little developing\nmachine or instrument or organ, and our little baby mind begins to\nstir with all our wonderful psychical beginnings. And so we are in\nbud.\n\nBut it won't do. It is too much of a Pisgah sight. We overlook too\nmuch. _Descendez, cher Moise. Vous voyez trop loin._ You see too far\nall at once, dear Moses. Too much of a bird's-eye view across the\nPromised Land to the shore. Come down, and walk across, old fellow.\nAnd you won't see all that milk and honey and grapes the size of\nduck's eggs. All the dear little budding infant with its tender\nvirginal mind and various clouds of glory instead of a napkin. Not at\nall, my dear chap. No such luck of a promised land.\n\nClimb down, Pisgah, and go to Jericho. _Allons_, there is no road yet,\nbut we are all Aarons with rods of our own.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE HOLY FAMILY\n\n\nWe are all very pleased with Mr. Einstein for knocking that eternal\naxis out of the universe. The universe isn't a spinning wheel. It is a\ncloud of bees flying and veering round. Thank goodness for that, for\nwe were getting drunk on the spinning wheel.\n\nSo that now the universe has escaped from the pin which was pushed\nthrough it, like an impaled fly vainly buzzing: now that the multiple\nuniverse flies its own complicated course quite free, and hasn't got\nany hub, we can hope also to escape.\n\nWe won't be pinned down, either. We have no one law that governs us.\nFor me there is only one law: _I am I._ And that isn't a law, it's\njust a remark. One is one, but one is not all alone. There are other\nstars buzzing in the center of their own isolation. And there is no\nstraight path between them. There is no straight path between you and\nme, dear reader, so don't blame me if my words fly like dust into\nyour eyes and grit between your teeth, instead of like music into your\nears. I am I, but also you are you, and we are in sad need of a theory\nof human relativity. We need it much more than the universe does. The\nstars know how to prowl round one another without much damage done.\nBut you and I, dear reader, in the first conviction that you are me\nand that I am you, owing to the oneness of mankind, why, we are always\nfalling foul of one another, and chewing each other's fur.\n\nYou are _not_ me, dear reader, so make no pretentions to it. Don't get\nalarmed if _I_ say things. It isn't your sacred mouth which is opening\nand shutting. As for the profanation of your sacred ears, just apply a\nlittle theory of relativity, and realize that what I say is not what\nyou hear, but something uttered in the midst of my isolation, and\narriving strangely changed and travel-worn down the long curve of your\nown individual circumambient atmosphere. I may say Bob, but heaven\nalone knows what the goose hears. And you may be sure that a red rag\nis, to a bull, something far more mysterious and complicated than a\nsocialist's necktie.\n\nSo I hope now I have put you in your place, dear reader. Sit you like\nWatts' Hope on your own little blue globe, and I'll sit on mine, and\nwe won't bump into one another if we can help it. You can twang your\nold hopeful lyre. It may be music to you, so I don't blame you. It is\na terrible wowing in my ears. But that may be something in my\nindividual atmosphere; some strange deflection as your music crosses\nthe space between us. Certainly I never hear the concert of World\nRegeneration and Hope Revived Again without getting a sort of\nlock-jaw, my teeth go so keen on edge from the twanging harmony.\nStill, the world-regenerators may _really_ be quite excellent\nperformers on their own jews'-harps. Blame the edginess of my teeth.\n\nNow I am going to launch words into space so mind your cosmic eye.\n\nAs I said in my small but naturally immortal book, \"Psychoanalysis and\nthe Unconscious,\" there's more in it than meets the eye. There's more\nin you, dear reader, than meets the eye. What, don't you believe it?\nDo you think you're as obvious as a poached egg on a piece of toast,\nlike the poor lunatic? Not a bit of it, dear reader. You've got a\nsolar plexus, and a lumbar ganglion not far from your liver, and I'm\ngoing to tell everybody. Nothing brings a man home to himself like\ntelling everybody. And I _will_ drive you home to yourself, do you\nhear? You've been poaching in my private atmospheric grounds long\nenough, identifying yourself with me and me with everybody. A nice row\nthere'd be in heaven if Aldebaran caught Sirius by the tail and said,\n\"Look here, you're not to look so green, you damm dog-star! It's an\noffense against star-regulations.\"\n\nWhich reminds me that the Arabs say the shooting stars, meteorites,\nare starry stones which the angels fling at the poaching demons whom\nthey catch sight of prowling too near the palisades of heaven. I must\nsay I like Arab angels. My heaven would coruscate like a catherine\nwheel, with white-hot star-stones. Away, you dog, you prowling\ncur.--Got him under the left ear-hole, Gabriel--! See him, see him,\nMichael? That hopeful blue devil! Land him one! Biff on your bottom,\nyou hoper.\n\nBut I wish the Arabs wouldn't entice me, or you, dear reader, provoke\nme to this. I feel with you, dear reader, as I do with a deaf-man when\nhe pushes his vulcanite ear, his listening machine, towards my mouth.\nI want to shout down the telephone ear-hole all kinds of improper\nthings, to see what effect they will have on the stupid dear face at\nthe end of the coil of wire. After all, words must be very different\nafter they've trickled round and round a long wire coil. Whatever\nbecomes of them! And I, who am a bit deaf myself, and may in the end\nhave a deaf-machine to poke at my friends, it ill becomes me to be so\nunkind, yet that's how I feel. So there we are.\n\nHelp me to be serious, dear reader.\n\nIn that little book, \"Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious,\" I tried\nrather wistfully to convince you, dear reader, that you had a solar\nplexus and a lumbar ganglion and a few other things. I don't know why\nI took the trouble. If a fellow doesn't believe he's got a nose, the\nbest way to convince him is gently to waft a little pepper into his\nnostrils. And there was I painting my own nose purple, and wistfully\ninviting you to look and believe. No more, though.\n\nYou've got first and foremost a solar plexus, dear reader; and the\nsolar plexus is a great nerve center which lies behind your stomach. I\ncan't be accused of impropriety or untruth, because any book of\nscience or medicine which deals with the nerve-system of the human\nbody will show it to you quite plainly. So don't wriggle or try to\nlook spiritual. Because, willy-nilly, you've got a solar plexus, dear\nreader, among other things. I'm writing a good sound science book,\nwhich there's no gainsaying.\n\nNow, your solar plexus, most gentle of readers, is where you are you.\nIt is your first and greatest and deepest center of consciousness. If\nyou want to know _how_ conscious and _when_ conscious, I must refer\nyou to that little book, \"Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious.\"\n\nAt your solar plexus you are primarily conscious: there, behind you\nstomach. There you have the profound and pristine conscious awareness\nthat you are you. Don't say you haven't. I know you have. You might as\nwell try to deny the nose on your face. There is your first and\ndeepest seat of awareness. There you are triumphantly aware of your\nown individual existence in the universe. Absolutely there is the keep\nand central stronghold of your triumphantly-conscious self. There you\n_are_, and you know it. So stick out your tummy gaily, my dear, with a\n_Me voila_. With a _Here I am!_ With an _Ecco mi!_ With a _Da bin\nich!_ There you are, dearie.\n\nBut not only a triumphant awareness that _There you are_. An exultant\nawareness also that outside this quiet gate, this navel, lies a whole\nuniverse on which you can lay tribute. Aha--at birth you closed the\ncentral gate for ever. Too dangerous to leave it open. Too near the\nquick. But there are other gates. There are eyes and mouths and ears\nand nostrils, besides the two lower gates of the passionate body, and\nthe closed but not locked gates of the breasts. Many gates. And\nbesides the actual gates, the marvelous wireless communication between\nthe great center and the surrounding or contiguous world.\n\nAuthorized science tells you that this first great plexus, this\nall-potent nerve-center of consciousness and dynamic life-activity is\na sympathetic center. From the solar plexus as from your castle-keep\nyou look around and see the fair lands smiling, the corn and fruit and\ncattle of your increase, the cottages of your dependents and the halls\nof your beloveds. From the solar plexus you know that all the world is\nyours, and all is goodly.\n\nThis is the great center, where in the womb, your life first sparkled\nin individuality. This is the center that drew the gestating maternal\nblood-stream upon you, in the nine-months lurking, drew it on you for\nyour increase. This is the center whence the navel-string broke, but\nwhere the invisible string of dynamic consciousness, like a dark\nelectric current connecting you with the rest of life, will never\nbreak until you die and depart from corporate individuality.\n\nThey say, by the way, that doctors now perform a little operation on\nthe born baby, so that no more navel shows. No more belly-buttons,\ndear reader! Lucky I caught you this generation, before the doctors\nhad saved your appearances. Yet, _caro mio_, whether it shows or not,\nthere you once had immediate connection with the maternal\nblood-stream. And, because the male nucleus which derived from the\nfather still lies sparkling and potent within the solar plexus,\ntherefore that great nerve-center of you, still has immediate\nknowledge of your father, a subtler but still vital connection. We\ncall it the tie of blood. So be it. It is a tie of blood. But much\nmore definite than we imagine. For true it is that the one bright male\ngerm which went to your begetting was drawn from the blood of the\nfather. And true it is that that same bright male germ lies unquenched\nand unquenchable at the center of you, within the famous solar plexus.\nAnd furthermore true is it that this unquenched father-spark within\nyou sends forth vibrations and dark currents of vital activity all the\ntime; connecting direct with your father. You will never be able to\nget away from it while you live.\n\nThe connection with the mother may be more obvious. Is there not your\nostensible navel, where the rupture between you and her took place?\nBut because the mother-child relation is more plausible and flagrant,\nis that any reason for supposing it deeper, more vital, more\nintrinsic? Not a bit. Because if the large parent mother-germ still\nlives and acts vividly and mysteriously in the great fused nucleus of\nyour solar plexus, does the smaller, brilliant male-spark that derived\nfrom your father act any less vividly? By no means. It is\ndifferent--it is less ostensible. It may be even in magnitude smaller.\nBut it may be even more vivid, even more intrinsic. So beware how you\ndeny the father-quick of yourself. You may be denying the most\nintrinsic quick of all.\n\nIn the same way it follows that, since brothers and sisters have the\nsame father and mother, therefore in every brother and sister there is\na direct communication such as can never happen between strangers. The\nparent nuclei do not die within the new nucleus. They remain there,\nmarvelous naked sparkling dynamic life-centers, nodes, well-heads of\nvivid life itself. Therefore in every individual the parent nuclei\nlive, and give direction connection, blood connection we call it, with\nthe rest of the family. It _is_ blood connection. For the fecundating\nnuclei are the very spark-essence of the blood. And while life lives\nthe parent nuclei maintain their own centrality and dynamic\neffectiveness within the solar plexus of the child. So that every\nindividual has mother and father both sparkling within himself.\n\nBut this is rather a preliminary truth than an intrinsic truth. The\nintrinsic truth of every individual is the new unit of unique\nindividuality which emanates from the fusion of the parent nuclei.\nThis is the incalculable and intangible Holy Ghost each time--each\nindividual his own Holy Ghost. When, at the moment of conception, the\ntwo parent nuclei fuse to form a new unit of life, then takes place\nthe great mystery of creation. A new individual appears--not the\nresult of the fusion merely. Something more. The quality of\nindividuality cannot be derived. The new individual, in his singleness\nof self, is a perfectly new whole. He is not a permutation and\ncombination of old elements, transferred through the parents. No, he\nis something underived and utterly unprecedented, unique, a new soul.\n\nThis quality of pure individuality is, however, only the one supreme\nquality. It consummates all other qualities, but does not consume\nthem. All the others are there, all the time. And only at his maximum\ndoes an individual surpass all his derivative elements, and become\npurely himself. And most people never get there. In his own pure\nindividuality a man surpasses his father and mother, and is utterly\nunknown to them. \"Woman, what have I to do with thee?\" But this does\nnot alter the fact that within him lives the mother-quick and the\nfather-quick, and that though in his wholeness he is rapt away beyond\nthe old mother-father connections, they are still there within him,\nconsummated but not consumed. Nor does it alter the fact that very few\npeople surpass their parents nowadays, and attain any individuality\nbeyond them. Most men are half-born slaves: the little soul they are\nborn with just atrophies, and merely the organism emanates, the new\nself, the new soul, the new swells into manhood, like big potatoes.\n\nSo there we are. But considering man at his best, he is at the start\nfaced with the great problem. At the very start he has to undertake\nhis tripartite being, the mother within him, the father within him,\nand the Holy Ghost, the self which he is supposed to consummate, and\nwhich mostly he doesn't.\n\nAnd there it is, a hard physiological fact. At the moment of our\nconception, the father nucleus fuses with the mother nucleus, and the\nwonder emanates, the new self, the new soul, the new individual cell.\nBut in the new individual cell the father-germ and the mother-germ do\nnot relinquish their identity. There they remain still, incorporated\nand never extinguished. And so, the blood-stream of race is one\nstream, for ever. But the moment the mystery of pure individual\nnewness ceased to be enacted and fulfilled, the blood-stream would dry\nup and be finished. Mankind would die out.\n\nLet us go back then to the solar plexus. There sparkle the included\nmother-germ and father-germ, giving us direct, immediate blood-bonds,\nfamily connection. The connection is as direct and as subtle as\nbetween the Marconi stations, two great wireless stations. A family,\nif you like, is a group of wireless stations, all adjusted to the\nsame, or very much the same vibration. All the time they quiver with\nthe interchange, there is one long endless flow of vitalistic\ncommunication between members of one family, a long, strange\n_rapport_, a sort of life-unison. It is a ripple of life through many\nbodies as through one body. But all the time there is the jolt, the\nrupture of individualism, the individual asserting himself beyond all\nties or claims. The highest goal for every man is the goal of pure\nindividual being. But it is a goal you cannot reach by the mere\nrupture of all ties. A child isn't born by being torn from the womb.\nWhen it is born by natural process that is rupture enough. But even\nthen the ties are not broken. They are only subtilized.\n\nFrom the solar plexus first of all pass the great vitalistic\ncommunications between child and parents, the first interplay of\nprimal, pre-mental knowledge and sympathy. It is a great subtle\ninterplay, and from this interplay the child is built up, body and\npsyche. Impelled from the primal conscious center in the abdomen, the\nchild seeks the mother, seeks the breast, opens a blind mouth and\ngropes for the nipple. Not mentally directed and yet certainly\ndirected. Directed from the dark pre-mind center of the solar plexus.\nFrom this center the child seeks, the mother knows. Hence the true\nmindlessness of the pristine, healthy mother. She does not need to\nthink, mentally to know. She knows so profoundly and actively at the\ngreat abdominal life-center.\n\nBut if the child thus seeks the mother, does it then know the mother\nalone? To an infant the mother is the whole universe. Yet the child\nneeds more than the mother. It needs as well the presence of men, the\nvibration from the present body of the man. There may not be any\nactual, palpable connection. But from the great voluntary center in\nthe man pass unknowable communications and unreliable nourishment of\nthe stream of manly blood, rays which we cannot see, and which so far\nwe have refused to know, but none the less essential, quickening dark\nrays which pass from the great dark abdominal life-center in the\nfather to the corresponding center in the child. And these rays, these\nvibrations, are not like the mother-vibrations. Far, far from it. They\ndo not need the actual contact, the handling and the caressing. On the\ncontrary, the true male instinct is to avoid physical contact with a\nbaby. It may not need even actual presence. But present or absent,\nthere should be between the baby and the father that strange,\nintangible communication, that strange pull and circuit such as the\nmagnetic pole exercises upon a needle, a vitalistic pull and flow\nwhich lays all the life-plasm of the baby into the line of vital\nquickening, strength, knowing. And any lack of this vital circuit,\nthis vital interchange between father and child, man and child, means\nan inevitable impoverishment to the infant.\n\nThe child exists in the interplay of two great life-waves, the womanly\nand the male. In appearance, the mother is everything. In truth, the\nfather has actively very little part. It does not matter much if he\nhardly sees his child. Yet see it he should, sometimes, and touch it\nsometimes, and renew with it the connection, the life-circuit, not\nallow it to lapse, and so vitally starve his child.\n\nBut remember, dear reader, please, that there is not the slightest\nneed for you to believe me, or even read me. Remember, it's just your\nown affair. Don't implicate me.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nPLEXUSES, PLANES AND SO ON\n\n\nThe primal consciousness in man is pre-mental, and has nothing to do\nwith cognition. It is the same as in the animals. And this pre-mental\nconsciousness remains as long as we live the powerful root and body of\nour consciousness. The mind is but the last flower, the _cul de sac_.\n\nThe first seat of our primal consciousnesses the solar plexus, the\ngreat nerve-center situated behind the stomach. From this center we\nare first dynamically conscious. For the primal consciousness is\nalways dynamic, and never, like mental consciousness, static. Thought,\nlet us say what we will about its magic powers, is instrumental only,\nthe soul's finest instrument for the business of living. Thought is\njust a means to action and living. But life and action take rise\nactually at the great centers of dynamic consciousness.\n\nThe solar plexus, the greatest and most important center of our\ndynamic consciousness, is a sympathetic center. At this main center of\nyour first-mind we know as we can never mentally know. Primarily we\nknow, each man, each living creature knows, profoundly and\nsatisfactorily and without question, that _I am I._ This root of all\nknowledge and being is established in the solar plexus; it is dynamic,\npre-mental knowledge, such as cannot be transferred into thought. Do\nnot ask me to transfer the pre-mental dynamic knowledge into thought.\nIt cannot be done. The knowledge that _I am I_ can never be thought:\nonly known.\n\nThis being the very first term of our life-knowledge, a knowledge\nestablished physically and psychically the moment the two parent\nnuclei fused, at the moment of the conception, it remains integral as\na piece of knowledge in every subsequent nucleus derived from this one\noriginal. But yet the original nucleus, formed from the two parent\nnuclei at our conception, remains always primal and central, and is\nalways the original fount and home of the first and supreme knowledge\nthat _I am I._ This original nucleus is embodied in the solar plexus.\n\nBut the original nucleus divides. The first division, as science\nknows, is a division of recoil. From the perfect oneing of the two\nparent nuclei in the egg-cell results a recoil or new assertion. That\nwhich was perfect _one_ now divides again, and in the recoil becomes\nagain two.\n\nThis second nucleus, the nucleus born of recoil, is the nuclear origin\nof all the great nuclei of the voluntary system, which are the nuclei\nof assertive individualism. And it remains central in the adult human\nbody as it was in the egg-cell. In the adult human body the first\nnucleus of independence, first-born from the great original nucleus of\nour conception, lies always established in the lumbar ganglion. Here\nwe have our positive center of independence, in a multifarious\nuniverse.\n\nAt the solar plexus, the dynamic knowledge is this, that _I am I._ The\nsolar plexus is the center of all the sympathetic system. The great\nprime knowledge is sympathetic in nature. I am I, in vital centrality.\nI am I, the vital center of all things. I am I, the clew to the whole.\nAll is one with me. It is the one identity.\n\nBut at the lumbar ganglion, which is the center of separate identity,\nthe knowledge is of a different mode, though the term is the same. At\nthe lumbar ganglion I know that I am I, in distinction from a whole\nuniverse, which is not as I am. This is the first tremendous flash of\nknowledge of singleness and separate identity. I am I, not because I\nam at one with all the universe, but because I am other than all the\nuniverse. It is my distinction from all the rest of things which makes\nme myself. Because I am set utterly apart and distinguished from all\nthat is the rest of the universe, therefore _I am I._ And this root of\nour knowledge in separateness lies rooted all the time in the lumbar\nganglion. It is the second term of our dynamic psychic existence.\n\nIt is from the great sympathetic center of the solar plexus that the\nchild rejoices in the mother and in its own blissful centrality, its\nunison with the as yet unknown universe. Look at the pictures of\nMadonna and Child, and you will even _see_ it. It is from this center\nthat it draws all things unto itself, winningly, drawing love for the\nsoul, and actively drawing in milk. The same center controls the great\nintake of love and of milk, of psychic and of physical nourishment.\n\nAnd it is from the great voluntary center of the lumbar ganglion that\nthe child asserts its distinction from the mother, the single identity\nof its own existence, and its power over its surroundings. From this\ncenter issues the violent little pride and lustiness which kicks with\nglee, or crows with tiny exultance in its own being, or which claws\nthe breast with a savage little rapacity, and an incipient\nmasterfulness of which every mother is aware. This incipient mastery,\nthis sheer joy of a young thing in its own single existence, the\nmarvelous playfulness of early youth, and the roguish mockery of the\nmother's love, as well as the bursts of temper and rage, all belong to\ninfancy. And all this flashes spontaneously, _must_ flash\nspontaneously from the first great center of independence, the\npowerful lumbar ganglion, great dynamic center of all the voluntary\nsystem, of all the spirit of pride and joy in independent existence.\nAnd it is from this center too that the milk is urged away down the\ninfant bowels, urged away towards excretion. The motion is the same,\nbut here it applies to the material, not to the vital relation. It is\nfrom the lumbar ganglion that the dynamic vibrations are emitted which\nthrill from the stomach and bowels, and promote the excremental\nfunction of digestion. It is the solar plexus which controls the\nassimilatory function in digestion.\n\nSo, in the first division of the egg-cell is set up the first plane of\npsychic and physical life, remaining radically the same throughout the\nwhole existence of the individual. The two original nuclei of the\negg-cell remain the same two original nuclei within the corpus of the\nadult individual. Their psychic and their physical dynamic is the same\nin the solar plexus and lumbar ganglion as in the two nuclei of the\negg-cell. The first great division in the egg remains always the same,\nthe unchanging great division in the psychic and the physical\nstructure; the unchanging great division in knowledge and function. It\nis a division into polarized duality, psychical and physical, of the\nhuman being. It is the great vertical division of the egg-cell, and of\nthe nature of man.\n\nThen, this division having taken place, there is a new thrill of\nconjunction or collision between the divided nuclei, and at once the\nsecond birth takes place. The two nuclei now split horizontally. There\nis a horizontal division across the whole egg-cell, and the nuclei are\nnow four, two above, and two below. But those below retain their\noriginal nature, those above are new in nature. And those above\ncorrespond again to those below.\n\nIn the developed child, the great horizontal division of the egg-cell,\nresulting in four nuclei, this remains the same. The horizontal\ndivision-wall is the diaphragm. The two upper nuclei are the two\ngreat nerve-centers, the cardiac plexus and the thoracic ganglion. We\nhave again a sympathetic center primal in activity and knowledge, and\na corresponding voluntary center. In the center of the breast, the\ncardiac plexus acts as the great sympathetic mode of new dynamic\nactivity, new dynamic consciousness. And near the spine, by the wall\nof the shoulders, the thoracic ganglion acts as the powerful voluntary\ncenter of separateness and power, in the same vertical line as the\nlumbar ganglion, but horizontally so different.\n\nNow we must change our whole feeling. We must put off the deep way of\nunderstanding which belongs to the lower body of our nature, and\ntransfer ourselves into the upper plane, where being and functioning\nare different.\n\nAt the cardiac plexus, there in the center of the breast, we have now\na new great sun of knowledge and being. Here there is no more of self.\nHere there is no longer the dark, exultant knowledge that _I am I._ A\nchange has come. Here I know no more of myself. Here I am not. Here I\nonly know the delightful revelation that you are you. The wonder is no\nlonger within me, my own dark, centrifugal, exultant self. The wonder\nis without me. The wonder is outside me. And I can no longer exult\nand know myself the dark, central sun of the universe. Now I look with\nwonder, with tenderness, with joyful yearning towards that which is\noutside me, beyond me, not me. Behold, that which was once negative\nhas now become the only positive. The other being is now the great\npositive reality, I myself am as nothing. Positivity has changed\nplaces.\n\nIf we want to see the portrayed look, then we must turn to the North,\nto the fair, wondering, blue-eyed infants of the Northern masters.\nThey seem so frail, so innocent and wondering, touching outwards to\nthe mystery. They are not the same as the Southern child, nor the\nopposite. Their whole life mystery is different. Instead of\nconsummating all things within themselves, as the dark little Southern\ninfants do, the Northern Jesus-children reach out delicate little\nhands of wondering innocence towards delicate, flower-reverential\nmothers. Compare a Botticelli Madonna, with all her wounded and\nabnegating sensuality, with a Hans Memling Madonna, whose soul is pure\nand only reverential. Beyond me is the mystery and the glory, says the\nNorthern mother: let me have no self, let me only seek that which is\nall-pure, all-wonderful. But the Southern mother says: This is mine,\nthis is mine, this is my child, my wonder, my master, my lord, my\nscourge, my own.\n\nFrom the cardiac plexus the child goes forth in bliss. It seeks the\nrevelation of the unknown. It wonderingly seeks the mother. It opens\nits small hands and spreads its small fingers to touch her. And bliss,\nbliss, bliss, it meets the wonder in mid-air and in mid-space it finds\nthe loveliness of the mother's face. It opens and shuts its little\nfingers with bliss, it laughs the wonderful, selfless laugh of pure\nbaby-bliss, in the first ecstasy of finding all its treasure, groping\nupon it and finding it in the dark. It opens wide, child-wide eyes to\nsee, to see. But it cannot see. It is puzzled, it wrinkles its face.\nBut when the mother puts her face quite near, and laughs and coos,\nthen the baby trembles with an ecstasy of love. The glamour, the\nwonder, the treasure beyond. The great uplift of rapture. All this\nsurges from that first center of the breast, the sun of the breast,\nthe cardiac plexus.\n\nAnd from the same center acts the great function of the heart and\nbreath. Ah, the aspiration, the aspiration, like a hope, like a\nyearning constant and unfailing with which we take in breath. When we\nbreathe, when we take in breath, it is not as when we take in food.\nWhen we breathe in we aspire, we yearn towards the heaven of air and\nlight. And when the heart dilates to draw in the stream of dark blood,\nit opens its arms as to a beloved. It dilates with reverent joy, as a\nhost opening his doors to an honored guest, whom he delights to serve:\nopening his doors to the wonder which comes to him from beyond, and\nwithout which he were nothing.\n\nSo it is that our heart dilates, our lungs expand. They are bidden by\nthat great and mysterious impulse from the cardiac plexus, which bids\nthem seek the mystery and the fulfillment of the beyond. They seek the\nbeyond, the air of the sky, the hot blood from the dark under-world.\nAnd so we live.\n\nAnd then, they relax, they contract. They are driven by the opposite\nmotion from the powerful voluntary center of the thoracic ganglion..\nThat which was drawn in, was invited, is now relinquished, allowed to\ngo forth, negatively. Not positively dismissed, but relinquished.\n\nThere is a wonderful complementary duality between the voluntary and\nthe sympathetic activity on the same plane. But between the two\nplanes, upper and lower, there is a further dualism, still more\nstartling, perhaps. Between the dark, glowing first term of knowledge\nat the solar plexus: _I am I, all is one in me_; and the first term of\nvolitional knowledge: _I am myself, and these others are not as I\nam_;--there is a world of difference. But when the world changes\nagain, and on the upper plane we realize the wonder of other things,\nthe difference is almost shattering. The thoracic ganglion is a\nganglion of power. When the child in its delicate bliss seeks the\nmother and finds her and is added on to her, then it fulfills itself\nin the great upper sympathetic mode. But then it relinquishes her. It\nceases to be aware of her. And if she tries to force its love to play\nupon her again, like light revealing her to herself, then the child\nturns away. Or it will lie, and look at her with the strange, odd,\ncurious look of knowledge, like a little imp who is spying her out.\nThis is the curious look that many mothers cannot bear. Involuntarily\nit arouses a sort of hate in them--the look of scrutinizing curiosity,\napart, and as it were studying, balancing them up. Yet it is a look\nwhich comes into every child's eyes. It is the reaction of the great\nvoluntary plexus between the shoulders. The mother is suddenly set\napart, as an object of curiosity, coldly, sometimes dreamily,\nsometimes puzzled, sometimes mockingly observed.\n\nAgain, if a mother neglect her child, it cries, it weeps for her love\nand attention. Its pitiful lament is one of the forms of compulsion\nfrom the upper center. This insistence on pity, on love, is quite\ndifferent from the rageous weeping, which is compulsion from the lower\ncenter, below the diaphragm. Again, some children just drop everything\nthey can lay hands on over the edge of their crib, or their table.\nThey drop everything out of sight. And then they look up with a\ncurious look of negative triumph. This is again a form of recoil from\nthe upper center, the obliteration of the thing which is outside. And\nhere a child is acting quite differently from the child who joyously\n_smashes_. The desire to smash comes from the lower centers.\n\nWe can quite well recognize the will exerted from the lower center. We\ncall it headstrong temper and masterfulness. But the peculiar will of\nthe upper center--the sort of nervous, critical objectivity, the\ndeliberate forcing of sympathy, the play upon pity and tenderness, the\nplaintive bullying of love, or the benevolent bullying of love--these\nwe don't care to recognize. They are the extravagance of spiritual\n_will_. But in its true harmony the thoracic ganglion is a center of\nhappier activity: of real, eager curiosity, of the delightful desire\nto pick things to pieces, and the desire to put them together again,\nthe desire to \"find out,\" and the desire to invent: all this arises on\nthe upper plane, at the volitional center of the thoracic ganglion.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTREES AND BABIES AND PAPAS AND MAMAS\n\n\nOh, damn the miserable baby with its complicated ping-pong table of an\nunconscious. I'm sure, dear reader, you'd rather have to listen to the\nbrat howling in its crib than to me expounding its plexuses. As for\n\"mixing those babies up,\" I'd mix him up like a shot if I'd anything\nto mix him with. Unfortunately he's my own anatomical specimen of a\npickled rabbit, so there's nothing to be done with the bits.\n\nBut he gets on my nerves. I come out solemnly with a pencil and an\nexercise book, and take my seat in all gravity at the foot of a large\nfir-tree, and wait for thoughts to come, gnawing like a squirrel on a\nnut. But the nut's hollow.\n\nI think there are too many trees. They seem to crowd round and stare\nat me, and I feel as if they nudged one another when I'm not looking.\nI can _feel_ them standing there. And they won't let me get on about\nthe baby this morning. Just their cussedness. I felt they encouraged\nme like a harem of wonderful silent wives, yesterday.\n\nIt is half rainy too--the wood so damp and still and so secret, in the\nremote morning air. Morning, with rain in the sky, and the forest\nsubtly brooding, and me feeling no bigger than a pea-bug between the\nroots of my fir. The trees seem so much bigger than me, so much\nstronger in life, prowling silent around. I seem to feel them moving\nand thinking and prowling, and they overwhelm me. Ah, well, the only\nthing is to give way to them.\n\nIt is the edge of the Black Forest--sometimes the Rhine far off, on\nits Rhine plain, like a bit of magnesium ribbon. But not to-day.\nTo-day only trees, and leaves, and vegetable presences. Huge straight\nfir-trees, and big beech-trees sending rivers of roots into the\nground. And cuckoos, like noise falling in drops off the leaves. And\nme, a fool, sitting by a grassy wood-road with a pencil and a book,\nhoping to write more about that baby.\n\nNever mind. I listen again for noises, and I smell the damp moss. The\nlooming trees, so straight. And I listen for their silence. Big,\ntall-bodied trees, with a certain magnificent cruelty about them. Or\nbarbarity. I don't know why I should say cruelty. Their magnificent,\nstrong, round bodies! It almost seems I can hear the slow, powerful\nsap drumming in their trunks. Great full-blooded trees, with strange\ntree-blood in them, soundlessly drumming.\n\nTrees that have no hands and faces, no eyes. Yet the powerful\nsap-scented blood roaring up the great columns. A vast individual\nlife, and an overshadowing will. The will of a tree. Something that\nfrightens you.\n\nSuppose you want to look a tree in the face? You can't. It hasn't got\na face. You look at the strong body of a trunk: you look above you\ninto the matted body-hair of twigs and boughs: you see the soft green\ntips. But there are no eyes to look into, you can't meet its gaze. You\nkeep on looking at it in part and parcel.\n\nIt's no good looking at a tree, to know it. The only thing is to sit\namong the roots and nestle against its strong trunk, and not bother.\nThat's how I write all about these planes and plexuses, between the\ntoes of a tree, forgetting myself against the great ankle of the\ntrunk. And then, as a rule, as a squirrel is stroked into its\nwickedness by the faceless magic of a tree, so am I usually stroked\ninto forgetfulness, and into scribbling this book. My tree-book,\nreally.\n\nI come so well to understand tree-worship. All the old Aryans\nworshiped the tree. My ancestors. The tree of life. The tree of\nknowledge. Well, one is bound to sprout out some time or other, chip\nof the old Aryan block. I can so well understand tree-worship. And\nfear the deepest motive.\n\nNaturally. This marvelous vast individual without a face, without lips\nor eyes or heart. This towering creature that never had a face. Here\nam I between his toes like a pea-bug, and him noiselessly\nover-reaching me. And I feel his great blood-jet surging. And he has\nno eyes. But he turns two ways. He thrusts himself tremendously down\nto the middle earth, where dead men sink in darkness, in the damp,\ndense under-soil, and he turns himself about in high air. Whereas we\nhave eyes on one side of our head only, and only grow upwards.\n\nPlunging himself down into the black humus, with a root's gushing\nzest, where we can only rot dead; and his tips in high air, where we\ncan only look up to. So vast and powerful and exultant in his two\ndirections. And all the time, he has no face, no thought: only a huge,\nsavage, thoughtless soul. Where does he even keep his soul?--Where\ndoes anybody?\n\nA huge, plunging, tremendous soul. I would like to be a tree for a\nwhile. The great lust of roots. Root-lust. And no mind at all. He\ntowers, and I sit and feel safe. I like to feel him towering round me.\nI used to be afraid. I used to fear their lust, their rushing black\nlust. But now I like it, I worship it. I always felt them huge\nprimeval enemies. But now they are my only shelter and strength. I\nlose myself among the trees. I am so glad to be with them in their\nsilent, intent passion, and their great lust. They feed my soul. But I\ncan understand that Jesus was crucified on a tree.\n\nAnd I can so well understand the Romans, their terror of the bristling\nHercynian wood. Yet when you look from a height down upon the rolling\nof the forest--this Black Forest--it is as suave as a rolling, oily\nsea. Inside only, it bristles horrific. And it terrified the Romans.\n\nThe Romans! They too seem very near. Nearer than Hindenburg or Foch or\neven Napoleon. When I look across the Rhine plain, it is Rome, and the\nlegionaries of the Rhine that my soul notices. It must have been\nwonderful to come from South Italy to the shores of this sea-like\nforest: this dark, moist forest, with its enormously powerful\nintensity of tree life. Now I know, coming myself from rock-dry\nSicily, open to the day.\n\nThe Romans and the Greeks found everything human. Everything had a\nface, and a human voice. Men spoke, and their fountains piped an\nanswer.\n\nBut when the legions crossed the Rhine they found a vast impenetrable\nlife which had no voice. They met the faceless silence of the Black\nForest. This huge, huge wood did not answer when they called. Its\nsilence was too crude and massive. And the soldiers shrank: shrank\nbefore the trees that had no faces, and no answer. A vast array of\nnon-human life, darkly self-sufficient, and bristling with indomitable\nenergy. The Hercynian wood, not to be fathomed. The enormous power of\nthese collective trees, stronger in their somber life even than Rome.\n\nNo wonder the soldiers were terrified. No wonder they thrilled with\nhorror when, deep in the woods, they found the skulls and trophies of\ntheir dead comrades upon the trees. The trees had devoured them:\nsilently, in mouthfuls, and left the white bones. Bones of the mindful\nRomans--and savage, preconscious trees, indomitable. The true German\nhas something of the sap of trees in his veins even now: and a sort of\npristine savageness, like trees, helpless, but most powerful, under\nall his mentality. He is a tree-soul, and his gods are not human. His\ninstinct still is to nail skulls and trophies to the sacred tree, deep\nin the forest. The tree of life and death, tree of good and evil, tree\nof abstraction and of immense, mindless life; tree of everything\nexcept the spirit, spirituality.\n\nBut after bone-dry Sicily, and after the gibbering of myriad people\nall rattling their personalities, I am glad to be with the profound\nindifference of faceless trees. Their rudimentariness cannot know why\nwe care for the things we care for. They have no faces, no minds and\nbowels: only deep, lustful roots stretching in earth, and vast,\nlissome life in air, and primeval individuality. You can sacrifice the\nwhole of your spirituality on their altar still. You can nail your\nskull on their limbs. They have no skulls, no minds nor faces, they\ncan't make eyes of love at you. Their vast life dispenses with all\nthis. But they will live you down.\n\nThe normal life of one of these big trees is about a hundred years. So\nthe Herr Baron told me.\n\nOne of the few places that my soul will haunt, when I am dead, will be\nthis. Among the trees here near Ebersteinburg, where I have been\nalone and written this book. I can't leave these trees. They have\ntaken some of my soul.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nExcuse my digression, gentle reader. At first I left it out, thinking\nwe might not see wood for trees. But it doesn't much matter what we\nsee. It's nice just to look round, anywhere.\n\nSo there are two planes of being and consciousness and two modes of\nrelation and of function. We will call the lower plane the sensual,\nthe upper the spiritual. The terms may be unwise, but we can think of\nno other.\n\nPlease read that again, dear reader; you'll be a bit dazzled, coming\nout of the wood.\n\nIt is obvious that from the time a child is born, or conceived, it has\na permanent relation with the outer universe, relation in the two\nmodes, not one mode only. There are two ways of love, two ways of\nactivity and independence. And there needs some sort of equilibrium\nbetween the two modes. In the same way, in physical function there is\neating and drinking, and excrementation, on the lower plane and\nrespiration and heartbeat on the upper plane.\n\nNow the equilibrium to be established is fourfold. There must be a\ntrue equilibrium between what we eat and what we reject again by\nexcretion: likewise between the systole and diastole of the heart,\nthe inspiration and expiration of our breathing. Suffice to say the\nequilibrium is never quite perfect. Most people are either too fat or\ntoo thin, too hot or too cold, too slow or too quick. There is no such\nthing as an _actual_ norm, a living norm. A norm is merely an\nabstraction, not a reality.\n\nThe same on the psychical plane. We either love too much, or impose\nour will too much, are too spiritual or too sensual. There is not and\ncannot be any actual norm of human conduct. All depends, first, on the\nunknown inward need within the very nuclear centers of the individual\nhimself, and secondly on his circumstance. Some men _must_ be too\nspiritual, some _must_ be too sensual. Some _must_ be too sympathetic,\nand some _must_ be too proud. We have no desire to say what men\n_ought_ to be. We only wish to say there are all kinds of ways of\nbeing, and there is no such thing as human perfection. No man can be\nanything more than just himself, in genuine living relation to all his\nsurroundings. But that which _I_ am, when I am myself, will certainly\nbe anathema to those who hate individual integrity, and want to swarm.\nAnd that which I, being myself, am in myself, may make the hair\nbristle with rage on a man who is also himself, but very different\nfrom me. Then let it bristle. And if mine bristle back again, then let\nus, if we must, fly at one another like two enraged men. It is how it\nshould be. We've got to learn to live from the center of our own\nresponsibility only, and let other people do the same.\n\nTo return to the child, however, and his development on his two planes\nof consciousness. There is all the time a direct dynamic connection\nbetween child and mother, child and father also, from the start. It is\na connection on two planes, the upper and lower. From the lower\nsympathetic center the profound intake of love or vibration from the\nliving co-respondent outside. From the upper sympathetic center the\noutgoing of devotion and the passionate vibration of _given_ love,\ngiven attention. The two sympathetic centers are always, or should\nalways be, counterbalanced by their corresponding voluntary centers.\nFrom the great voluntary ganglion of the lower plane, the child is\nself-willed, independent, and masterful.\n\nIn the activity of this center a boy refuses to be kissed and pawed\nabout, maintaining his proud independence like a little wild animal.\nFrom this center he likes to command and to receive obedience. From\nthis center likewise he may be destructive and defiant and reckless,\ndetermined to have his own way at any cost.\n\nFrom this center, too, he learns to use his legs. The motion of\nwalking, like the motion of breathing, is twofold. First, a\nsympathetic cleaving to the earth with the foot: then the voluntary\nrejection, the spurning, the kicking away, the exultance in power and\nfreedom.\n\nFrom the upper voluntary center the child watches persistently,\nwilfully, for the attention of the mother: to be taken notice of, to\nbe caressed, in short to exist in and through the mother's attention.\nFrom this center, too, he coldly refuses to notice the mother, when\nshe insists on too much attention. This cold refusal is different from\nthe active rejection of the lower center. It is passive, but cold and\nnegative. It is the great force of our day. From the ganglion of the\nshoulders, also, the child breathes and his heart beats. From the same\ncenter he learns the first use of his arms. In the gesture of\nsympathy, from the upper plane, he embraces his mother with his arms.\nIn the motion of curiosity, or interest, which derives from the\nthoracic ganglion, he spreads his fingers, touches, feels, explores.\nIn the motion of rejection he drops an undesired object deliberately\nout of sight.\n\nAnd then, when the four centers of what we call the first _field_ of\nconsciousness are fully active, then it is that the eyes begin to\ngather their sight, the mouth to speak, the ears to awake to their\nintelligent hearings; all as a result of the great fourfold activity\nof the first dynamic field of consciousness. And then also, as a\nresult, the mind wakens to its impressions and to its incipient\ncontrol. For at first the control is non-mental, even non-cerebral.\nThe brain acts only as a sort of switchboard.\n\nThe business of the father, in all this incipient child-development,\nis to stand outside as a final authority and make the necessary\nadjustments. Where there is too much sympathy, then the great\nvoluntary centers of the spine are weak, the child tends to be\ndelicate. Then the father by instinct supplies the roughness, the\nsternness which stiffens in the child the centers of resistance and\nindependence, right from the very earliest days. Often, for a mere\ninfant, it is the father's fierce or stern presence, the vibration of\nhis voice, which starts the frictional and independent activity of the\ngreat voluntary ganglion and gives the first impulse to the\nindependence which later on is life itself.\n\nBut on the other hand, the father, from his distance, supports,\nprotects, nourishes his child, and it is ultimately on the remote but\npowerful father-love that the infant rests, in a rest which is beyond\nmother-love. For in the male the dominant centers are naturally the\nvolitional centers, centers of responsibility, authority, and care.\n\nIt is the father's business, again, to maintain some sort of\nequilibrium between the two modes of love in his infant. A mother may\nwish to bring up her child from the lovely upper centers only, from\nthe centers of the breast, in the mode of what we call pure or\nspiritual love. Then the child will be all gentle, all tender and\ntender-radiant, always enfolded with gentleness and forbearance,\nalways shielded from grossness or pain or roughness. Now the father's\ninstinct is to be rough and crude, good-naturedly brutal with the\nchild, calling the deeper centers, the sensual centers, into play.\n\"What do you want? My watch? Well, you can't have it, do you see,\nbecause it's mine.\" Not a lot of explanations of the \"You see,\ndarling.\" No such nonsense.--Or if a child wails unnecessarily for its\nmother, the father must be the check. \"Stop your noise, you little\nbrat! What ails you, you whiner?\" And if children be too sensitive,\ntoo sympathetic, then it will do the child no harm if the father\noccasionally throws the cat out of the window, or kicks the dog, or\nraises a storm in the house. Storms there must be. And if the child is\nold enough and robust enough, it can occasionally have its bottom\nsoundly spanked--by the father, if the mother refuses to perform that\nmost necessary duty. For a child's bottom is made occasionally to be\nspanked. The vibration of the spanking acts direct upon the spinal\nnerve-system, there is a direct reciprocity and reaction, the spanker\ntransfers his wrath to the great will-centers in the child, and these\nwill-centers react intensely, are vivified and educated.\n\nOn the other hand, given a mother who is too generally hard or\nindifferent, then it rests with the father to provide the delicate\nsympathy and the refined discipline. Then the father must show the\ntender sensitiveness of the upper mode. The sad thing to-day is that\nso few mothers have any deep bowels of love--or even the breast of\nlove. What they have is the benevolent spiritual will, the will of the\nupper self. But the will is not love. And benevolence in a parent is\na poison. It is bullying. In these circumstances the father must give\ndelicate adjustment, and, above all, some warm, native love from the\nricher sensual self.\n\nThe question of corporal punishment is important. It is no use roughly\nsmacking a shrinking, sensitive child. And yet, if a child is too\nshrinking, too sensitive, it may do it a world of good cheerfully to\nspank its posterior. Not brutally, not cruelly, but with real sound,\ngood-natured exasperation. And let the adult take the full\nresponsibility, half humorously, without apology or explanation. Let\nus avoid self-justification at all costs. Real corporal punishments\napply to the sensual plane. The refined punishments of the spiritual\nmode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.\nThe pained but resigned disapprobation of a mother is usually a very\nbad thing, much worse than the father's shouts of rage. And sendings\nto bed, and no dessert for a week, and so on, are crueller and meaner\nthan a bang on the head. When a parent gives his boy a beating, there\nis a living passionate interchange. But in these refined punishments,\nthe parent suffers nothing and the child is deadened. The bullying of\nthe refined, benevolent spiritual will is simply vitriol to the soul.\nYet parents administer it with all the righteousness of virtue and\ngood intention, sparing themselves perfectly.\n\nThe point is here. If a child makes you so that you really want to\nspank it soundly, then soundly spank the brat. But know all the time\n_what_ you are doing, and always be responsible for your anger. Never\nbe ashamed of it, and never surpass it. The flashing interchange of\nanger between parent and child is part of the responsible\nrelationship, necessary to growth. Again, if a child offends you\ndeeply, so that you really can't communicate with it any more, then,\nwhile the hurt is deep, switch off your connection from the child, cut\noff your correspondence, your vital communion, and be alone. But never\npersist in such a state beyond the time when your deep hurt dies down.\nThe only rule is, do what you _really_, impulsively, wish to do. But\nalways act on your own responsibility sincerely. And have the courage\nof your own strong emotion. They enrichen the child's soul.\n\nFor a child's primary education depends almost entirely on its\nrelation to its parents, brothers, and sisters. Between mother and\nchild, father and child, the law is this: I, the mother, am myself\nalone: the child is itself alone. But there exists between us a vital\ndynamic relation, for which I, being the conscious one, am basically\nresponsible. So, as far as possible, there must be in me no departure\nfrom myself, lest I injure the preconscious dynamic relation. I must\nabsolutely act according to my own true spontaneous feeling. But,\nmoreover, I must also have wisdom for myself and for my child. Always,\nalways the deep wisdom of responsibility. And always a brave\nresponsibility for the soul's own spontaneity. Love--what is love?\nWe'd better get a new idea. Love is, in all, generous impulse--even a\ngood spanking. But wisdom is something else, a deep collectedness in\nthe soul, a deep abiding by my own integral being, which makes me\nresponsible, not for the child, but for my certain duties towards the\nchild, and for maintaining the dynamic flow between the child and\nmyself as genuine as possible: that is to say, not perverted by ideals\nor by my _will_.\n\nMost fatal, most hateful of all things is bullying. But what is\nbullying? It is a desire to superimpose my own will upon another\nperson. Sensual bullying of course is fairly easily detected. What is\nmore dangerous is ideal bullying. Bullying people into what is ideally\ngood for them. I embrace for example an ideal, and I seek to enact\nthis ideal in the person of another. This is ideal bullying. A mother\nsays that life should be all love, all delicacy and forbearance and\ngentleness. And she proceeds to spin a hateful sticky web of permanent\nforbearance, gentleness, hushedness around her naturally passionate\nand hasty child. This so foils the child as to make him half imbecile\nor criminal. I may have ideals if I like--even of love and forbearance\nand meekness. But I have no right to ask another to have these ideals.\nAnd to impose _any ideals_ upon a child as it grows is almost\ncriminal. It results in impoverishment and distortion and subsequent\ndeficiency. In our day, most dangerous is the love and benevolence\nideal. It results in neurasthenia, which is largely a dislocation or\ncollapse of the great voluntary centers, a derangement of the will. It\nis in us an insistence upon the one life-mode only, the spiritual\nmode. It is a suppression of the great lower centers, and a living a\nsort of half-life, almost entirely from the upper centers. Thence,\nsince we live terribly and exhaustively from the upper centers, there\nis a tendency now towards pthisis and neurasthenia of the heart. The\ngreat sympathetic center of the breast becomes exhausted, the lungs,\nburnt by the over-insistence of one way of life, become diseased, the\nheart, strained in one mode of dilation, retaliates. The powerful\nlower centers are no longer fully active, particularly the great\nlumbar ganglion, which is the clue to our sensual passionate pride and\nindependence, this ganglion is atrophied by suppression. And it is\nthis ganglion which holds the spine erect. So, weak-chested,\nround-shouldered, we stoop hollowly forward on ourselves. It is the\nresult of the all-famous love and charity ideal, an ideal now quite\ndead in its sympathetic activity, but still fixed and determined in\nits voluntary action.\n\nLet us beware and beware, and beware of having a high ideal for\nourselves. But particularly let us beware of having an ideal for our\nchildren. So doing, we damn them. All we can have is wisdom. And\nwisdom is not a theory, it is a state of soul. It is the state wherein\nwe know our wholeness and the complicate, manifold nature of our\nbeing. It is the state wherein we know the great relations which exist\nbetween us and our near ones. And it is the state which accepts full\nresponsibility, first for our own souls, and then for the living\ndynamic relations wherein we have our being. It is no use expecting\nthe other person to know. Each must know for himself. But nowadays\nmen have even a stunt of pretending that children and idiots alone\nknow best. This is a pretty piece of sophistry, and criminal\ncowardice, trying to dodge the life-responsibility which no man or\nwoman can dodge without disaster.\n\nThe only thing is to be direct. If a child has to swallow castor-oil,\nthen say: \"Child, you've got to swallow this castor-oil. It is\nnecessary for your inside. I say so because it is true. So open your\nmouth.\" Why try coaxing and logic and tricks with children? Children\nare more sagacious than we are. They twig soon enough if there is a\nflaw in our own intention and our own true spontaneity. And they play\nup to our bit of falsity till there is hell to pay.\n\n\"You love mother, don't you, dear?\"--Just a piece of indecent trickery\nof the spiritual will. The great emotions like love are unspoken.\nSpeaking them is a sign of an indecent bullying will.\n\n\"Poor pussy! You must love poor pussy!\"\n\nWhat cant! What sickening cant! An appeal to love based on false pity.\nThat's the way to inculcate a filthy pharisaic conceit into a\nchild.--If the child ill-treats the cat, say:\n\n\"Stop mauling that cat. It's got its own life to live, so let it live\nit.\" Then if the brat persists, give tit for tat.\n\n\"What, you pull the cat's tail! Then I'll pull your nose, to see how\nyou like it.\" And give his nose a proper hard pinch.\n\nChildren _must_ pull the cat's tail a little. Children _must_ steal\nthe sugar sometimes. They _must_ occasionally spoil just the things\none doesn't want them to spoil. And they _must_ occasionally tell\nstories--tell a lie. Circumstances and life are such that we must all\nsometimes tell a lie: just as we wear trousers, because we don't\nchoose that everybody shall see our nakedness. Morality is a delicate\nact of adjustment on the soul's part, not a rule or a prescription.\nBeyond a certain point the child _shall_ not pull the cat's tail, _or_\nsteal the sugar, _or_ spoil the furniture, _or_ tell lies. But I'm\nafraid you can't fix this certain soul's humor. And so it must. If at\na sudden point you fly into a temper and thoroughly beat the boy for\nhardly touching the cat--well, that's life. All you've got to say to\nhim is: \"There, that'll serve you for all the times you _have_ pulled\nher tail and hurt her.\" And he will feel outraged, and so will you.\nBut what does it matter? Children have an infinite understanding of\nthe soul's passionate variabilities, and forgive even a real\ninjustice, if it was _spontaneous_ and not intentional. They know we\naren't perfect. What they don't forgive us is if we pretend we are: or\nif we _bully_.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTHE FIVE SENSES\n\n\nScience is wretched in its treatment of the human body as a sort of\ncomplex mechanism made up of numerous little machines working\nautomatically in a rather unsatisfactory relation to one another. The\nbody is the total machine; the various organs are the included\nmachines; and the whole thing, given a start at birth, or at\nconception, trundles on by itself. The only god in the machine, the\nhuman will or intelligence, is absolutely at the mercy of the machine.\n\nSuch is the orthodox view. Soul, when it is allowed an existence at\nall, sits somewhat vaguely within the machine, never defined. If\nanything goes wrong with the machine, why, the soul is forgotten\ninstantly. We summon the arch-mechanic of our day, the medicine-man.\nAnd a marvelous earnest fraud he is, doing his best. He is really\nwonderful as a mechanic of the human system. But the life within us\nfails more and more, while we marvelously tinker at the engines.\nDoctors are not to blame.\n\nIt is obvious that, even considering the human body as a very delicate\nand complex machine, you cannot keep such a machine running for one\nday without most exact central control. Still more is it impossible to\nconsider the automatic evolution of such a machine. When did any\nmachine, even a single spinning-wheel, automatically evolve itself?\nThere was a god in the machine before the machine existed.\n\nSo there we are with the human body. There must have been, and must be\na central god in the machine of each animate corpus. The little soul\nof the beetle makes the beetle toddle. The little soul of the _homo\nsapiens_ sets him on his two feet. Don't ask me to define the soul.\nYou might as well ask a bicycle to define the young damsel who so\nwhimsically and so god-like pedals her way along the highroad. A young\nlady skeltering off on her bicycle to meet her young man--why, what\ncould the bicycle make of such a mystery, if you explained it till\ndoomsday. Yet the bicycle wouldn't be spinning from Streatham to\nCroydon by itself.\n\nSo we may as well settle down to the little god in the machine. We may\nas well call it the individual soul, and leave it there. It's as far\nas the bicycle would ever get, if it had to define Mademoiselle. But\nbe sure the bicycle would not deny the existence of the young miss who\nseats herself in the saddle. Not like us, who try to pretend there is\nno one in the saddle. Why even the sun would no more spin without a\nrider than would a cycle-pedal. But, since we have innumerable planets\nto reckon with, in the spinning we must not begin to define the rider\nin terms of our own exclusive planet. Nevertheless, rider there is:\neven a rider of the many-wheeled universe.\n\nBut let us leave the universe alone. It is too big a bauble for\nme.--_Revenons._--At the start of me there is me. There is a\nmysterious little entity which is my individual self, the god who\nbuilds the machine and then makes his gay excursion of seventy years\nwithin it. Now we are talking at the moment about the machine. For the\nmoment we are the bicycle, and not the feather-brained cyclist. So\nthat all we can do is to define the cyclist in terms of ourself. A\nbicycle could say: Here, upon my leather saddle, rests a strange and\nanimated force, which I call the force of gravity, as being the one\ngreat force which controls my universe. And yet, on second thoughts, I\nmust modify myself. This great force of gravity is not _always_ in\nthe saddle. Sometimes it just is not there--and I lean strangely\nagainst a wall. I have been even known to turn upside down, with my\nwheels in the air; spun by the same mysterious Miss. So that I must\nintroduce a theory of Relativity. However, mostly, when I am awake and\nalive, she is in the saddle; or _it_ is in the saddle, the mysterious\nforce. And when it is in the saddle, then two subsidiary forces plunge\nand claw upon my two pedals, plunge and claw with inestimable power.\nAnd at the same time, a kind and mysterious force sways my head-stock,\nsways most incalculably, and governs my whole motion. This force is\nnot a driving force, but a subtle directing force, beneath whose grip\nmy bright steel body is flexible as a dipping highroad. Then let me\nnot forget the sudden clutch of arrest upon my hurrying wheels. Oh,\nthis is pain to me! While I am rushing forward, surpassing myself in\nan _elan vital_, suddenly the awful check grips my back wheel, or my\nfront wheel, or both. Suddenly there is a fearful arrest. My soul\nrushes on before my body, I feel myself strained, torn back. My fibers\ngroan. Then perhaps the tension relaxes.\n\nSo the bicycle will continue to babble about itself. And it will\ninevitably wind up with a philosophy. \"Oh, if only the great and\ndivine force rested for ever upon my saddle, and if only the\nmysterious will which sways my steering gear remained in place for\never: then my pedals would revolve of themselves, and never cease, and\nno hideous brake should tear the perpetuity of my motions. Then, oh\nthen I should be immortal. I should leap through the world for ever,\nand spin to infinity, till I was identified with the dizzy and\ntimeless cycle-race of the stars and the great sun....\"\n\nPoor old bicycle. The very thought is enough to start a philanthropic\nsociety for the prevention of cruelty to bicycles.\n\nWell, then, our human body is the bicycle. And our individual and\nincomprehensible self is the rider thereof. And seeing that the\nuniverse is another bicycle riding full tilt, we are bound to suppose\na rider for that also. But we needn't say what sort of rider. When I\nsee a cockroach scuttling across the floor and turning up its tail I\nstand affronted, and think: A rum sort of rider _you_ must have.\nYou've no business to have such a rider, do you hear?--And when I hear\nthe monotonous and plaintive cuckoo in the June woods, I think: Who\nthe devil made _that_ clock?--And when I see a politician making a\nfiery speech on a platform, and the crowd gawping, I think: Lord, save\nme--they've all got riders. But Holy Moses! you could never guess what\nwas coming.--And so I shouldn't like, myself, to start guessing about\nthe rider of the universe. I am all too flummoxed by the masquerade in\nthe tourney round about me.\n\nWe ourselves then: wisdom, like charity, begins at home. We've each of\nus got a rider in the saddle: an individual soul. Mostly it can't\nride, and can't steer, so mankind is like squadrons of bicycles\nrunning amok. We should every one fall off if we didn't ride so thick\nthat we hold each other up. Horrid nightmare!\n\nAs for myself, I have a horror of riding _en bloc_. So I grind away\nuphill, and sweat my guts out, as they say.\n\nWell, well--my body is my bicycle: the whole middle of me is the\nsaddle where sits the rider of my soul. And my front wheel is the\ncardiac plane, and my back wheel is the solar plexus. And the brakes\nare the voluntary ganglia. And the steering gear is my head. And the\nright and left pedals are the right and left dynamics of the body, in\nsome way corresponding to the sympathetic and voluntary division.\n\nSo that now I know more or less how my rider rides me, and from what\ncenters controls me. That is, I know the points of vital contact\nbetween my rider and my machine: between my invisible and my visible\nself. I don't attempt to say what is my rider. A bicycle might as well\ntry to define its young Miss by wriggling its handle-bars and ringing\nits bell.\n\nHowever, having more or less determined the four primary motions, we\ncan see the further unfolding. In a child, the solar plexus and the\ncardiac plexus, with corresponding voluntary ganglia, are awake and\nactive. From these centers develop the great functions of the body.\n\nAs we have seen, it is the solar plexus, with the lumbar ganglion,\nwhich controls the great dynamic system, the functioning of the liver\nand the kidneys. Any excess in the sympathetic dynamism tends to\naccelerate the action of the liver, to cause fever and constipation.\nAny collapse of the sympathetic dynamism causes anaemia. The sudden\nstimulating of the voluntary center may cause diarrhoea, and so on.\nBut all this depends so completely on the polarized flow between the\nindividual and the correspondent, between the child and mother, child\nand father, child and sisters or brothers or teacher, or\ncircumambient universe, that it is impossible to lay down laws,\nunless we state particulars. Nevertheless, the whole of the great\norgans of the lower body are controlled from the two lower centers,\nand these organs work well or ill according as there is a true dynamic\n_psychic_ activity at the two primary centers of consciousness. By a\n_true_ dynamic psychic activity we mean an activity which is true to\nthe individual himself, to his own peculiar soul-nature. And a dynamic\npsychic activity means a dynamic polarity between the individual\nhimself and other individuals concerned in his living; or between him\nand his immediate surroundings, human, physical, geographical.\n\nOn the upper plane, the lungs and heart are controlled from the\ncardiac plane and the thoracic ganglion. Any excess in the sympathetic\nmode from the upper centers tends to burn the lungs with oxygen,\nweaken them with stress, and cause consumption. So it is just criminal\nto make a child too loving. No child should be induced to love too\nmuch. It means derangement and death at last.\n\nBut beyond the primary physiological function--and it is the business\nof doctors to discover the relation between the functioning of the\nprimary organs and the dynamic psychic activity at the four primary\nconsciousness-centers,--beyond these physical functions, there are the\nactivities which are half-psychic, half-functional. Such as the five\nsenses.\n\nOf the five senses, four have their functioning in the face-region.\nThe fifth, the sense of touch, is distributed all over the body. But\nall have their roots in the four great primary centers of\nconsciousness. From the constellation of your nerve-nodes, from the\ngreat field of your poles, the nerves run out in every direction,\nending on the surface of the body. Inwardly this is an inextricable\nramification and communication.\n\nAnd yet the body is planned out in areas, there is a definite\narea-control from the four centers. On the back the sense of touch is\nnot acute. There the voluntary centers act in resistance. But in the\nfront of the body, the breast is one great field of sympathetic touch,\nthe belly is another. On these two fields the stimulus of touch is\nquite different, has a quite different psychic quality and psychic\nresult. The breast-touch is the fine alertness of quivering curiosity,\nthe belly-touch is a deep thrill of delight and avidity.\nCorrespondingly, the hands and arms are instruments of superb\ndelicate curiosity, and deliberate execution. Through the elbows and\nthe wrists flows the dynamic psychic current, and a dislocation in the\ncurrent between two individuals will cause a feeling of dislocation at\nthe wrists and elbows. On the lower plane, the legs and feet are\ninstruments of unfathomable gratifications and repudiations. The\nthighs, the knees, the feet are intensely alive with love-desire,\ndarkly and superbly drinking in the love-contact, blindly. Or they are\nthe great centers of resistance, kicking, repudiating. Sudden flushing\nof great general sympathetic desire will make a man feel weak at the\nknees. Hatred will harden the tension of the knees like steel, and\ngrip the feet like talons. Thus the fields of touch are four, two\nsympathetic fields in front of the body from the throat to the feet,\ntwo resistant fields behind from the neck to the heels.\n\nThere are two fields of touch, however, where the distribution is not\nso simple: the face and the buttocks. Neither in the face nor in the\nbuttocks is there one single mode of sense communication.\n\nThe face is of course the great window of the self, the great opening\nof the self upon the world, the great gateway. The lower body has its\nown gates of exit. But the bulk of our communication with all the\nouter universe goes on through the face.\n\nAnd every one of the windows or gates of the face has its direct\ncommunication with each of the four great centers of the first field\nof consciousness. Take the mouth, with the sense of taste. The mouth\nis primarily the gate of the two chief sensual centers. It is the\ngateway to the belly and the loins. Through the mouth we eat and we\ndrink. In the mouth we have the sense of taste. At the lips, too, we\nkiss. And the kiss of the mouth is the first sensual connection.\n\nIn the mouth also are the teeth. And the teeth are the instruments of\nour sensual will. The growth of the teeth is controlled entirely from\nthe two great sensual centers below the diaphragm. But almost entirely\nfrom the one center, the voluntary center. The growth and the life of\nthe teeth depend almost entirely on the lumbar ganglion. During the\ngrowth of the teeth the sympathetic mode is held in abeyance. There is\na sort of arrest. There is pain, there is diarrhoea, there is misery\nfor the baby.\n\nAnd we, in our age, have no rest with our teeth. Our mouths are too\nsmall. For many ages we have been suppressing the avid, negroid,\nsensual will. We have been converting ourselves into ideal creatures,\nall spiritually conscious, and active dynamically only on one plane,\nthe upper, spiritual plane. Our mouth has contracted, our teeth have\nbecome soft and un-quickened. Where in us are the sharp and vivid\nteeth of the wolf, keen to defend and devour? If we had them more, we\nshould be happier. Where are the white negroid teeth? Where? In our\nlittle pinched mouths they have no room. We are sympathy-rotten, and\nspirit-rotten, and idea-rotten. We have forfeited our flashing sensual\npower. And we have false teeth in our mouths. In the same way the lips\nof our sensual desire go thinner and more meaningless, in the\ncompression of our upper will and our idea-driven impulse. Let us\nbreak the conscious, self-conscious love-ideal, and we shall grow\nstrong, resistant teeth once more, and the teething of our young will\nnot be the hell it is.\n\nTeething is strictly the period when the voluntary center of the lower\nplane first comes into full activity, and takes for a time the\nprecedence.\n\nSo, the mouth is the great sensual gate to the lower body. But let us\nnot forget it is also a gate by which we breathe, the gate through\nwhich we speak and go impalpably forth to our object, the gate at\nwhich we can kiss the pinched, delicate, spiritual kiss. Therefore,\nalthough the main sensual gate of entrance to the lower body, it has\nits reference also to the upper body.\n\nTaste, the sense of taste, is an intake of a pure communication\nbetween us and a body from the outside world. It contains the element\nof touch, and in this it refers to the cardiac plexus. But taste,\n_qua_ taste, refers purely to the solar plexus.\n\nAnd then smell. The nostrils are the great gate from the wide\natmosphere of heaven to the lungs. The extreme sigh of yearning we\ncatch through the mouth. But the delicate nose advances always into\nthe air, our palpable communicator with the infinite air. Thus it has\nits first delicate root in the cardiac plexus, the root of its intake.\nAnd the root of the delicate-proud exhalation, rejection, is in the\nthoracic ganglion. But the nostrils have their other function of\nsmell. Here the delicate nerve-ends run direct from the lower centers,\nfrom the solar plexus and the lumbar ganglion, or even deeper. There\nis the refined sensual intake when a scent is sweet. There is the\nsensual repudiation when a scent is unsavoury. And just as the\nfullness of the lips and the shape of the mouth depend on the\ndevelopment from the lower or the upper centers, the sensual or the\nspiritual, so does the shape of the nose depend on the direct control\nof the deepest centers of consciousness. A perfect nose is perhaps the\nresult of a balance in the four modes. But what is a perfect nose!--We\nonly know that a short snub nose goes with an over-sympathetic nature,\nnot proud enough; while a long nose derives from the center of the\nupper will, the thoracic ganglion, our great center of curiosity, and\nbenevolent or objective control. A thick, squat nose is the\nsensual-sympathetic nose, and the high, arched nose the sensual\nvoluntary nose, having the curve of repudiation, as when we turn up\nour nose from a bad smell, but also the proud curve of haughtiness and\nsubjective authority. The nose is one of the greatest indicators of\ncharacter. That is to say, it almost inevitably indicates the mode of\npredominant dynamic consciousness in the individual, the predominant\nprimary center from which he lives.--When savages rub noses instead of\nkissing, they are exchanging a more sensitive and a deeper sensual\nsalute than our lip-touch.\n\nThe eyes are the third great gateway of the psyche. Here the soul goes\nin and out of the body, as a bird flying forth and coming home. But\nthe root of conscious vision is almost entirely in the breast. When I\ngo forth from my own eyes, in delight to dwell upon the world which is\nbeyond me, outside me, then I go forth from wide open windows, through\nwhich shows the full and living lambent darkness of my present inward\nself. I go forth, and I leave the lovely open darkness of my sensient\nself revealed; when I go forth in the wonder of vision to dwell upon\nthe beloved, or upon the wonder of the world, I go from the center of\nthe glad breast, through the eyes, and who will may look into the full\nsoft darkness of me, rich with my undiscovered presence. But if I am\ndispleased, then hard and cold my self stands in my eyes, and refuses\nany communication, any sympathy, but merely stares outwards. It is the\nmotion of cold objectivity from the thoracic ganglion. Or, from the\nsame center of will, cold but intense my eyes may watch with\ncuriosity, as a cat watches a fly. It may be into my curiosity will\ncreep an element of warm gladness in the wonder which I am beholding\noutside myself. Or it may be that my curiosity will be purely and\nsimply the cold, almost cruel curiosity of the upper will, directed\nfrom the ganglion of the shoulders: such as is the acute attention of\nan experimental scientist.\n\nThe eyes have, however, their sensual root as well. But this is hard\nto transfer into language, as all _our_ vision, our modern Northern\nvision is in the upper mode of actual seeing.\n\nThere is a sensual way of beholding. There is the dark, desirous look\nof a savage who apprehends only that which has direct reference to\nhimself, that which stirs a certain dark yearning within his lower\nself. Then his eye is fathomless blackness. But there is the dark eye\nwhich glances with a certain fire, and has no depth. There is a keen\nquick vision which watches, which beholds, but which never yields to\nthe object outside: as a cat watching its prey. The dark glancing look\nwhich knows the _strangeness_, the danger of its object, the need to\novercome the object. The eye which is not wide open to study, to\n_learn_, but which powerfully, proudly or cautiously glances, and\nknows the terror or the pure desirability of _strangeness_ in the\nobject it beholds. The savage is all in all in himself. That which he\nsees outside he hardly notices, or, he sees as something odd,\nsomething automatically desirable, something lustfully desirable, or\nsomething dangerous. What we call vision, that he has not.\n\nWe must compare the look in a horse's eye with the look in a cow's.\nThe eye of the cow is soft, velvety, receptive. She stands and gazes\nwith the strangest intent curiosity. She goes forth from herself in\nwonder. The root of her vision is in her yearning breast. The same one\nhears when she moos. The same massive weight of passion is in a bull's\nbreast; the passion to go forth from himself. His strength is in his\nbreast, his weapons are on his head. The wonder is always outside him.\n\nBut the horse's eye is bright and glancing. His curiosity is cautious,\nfull of terror, or else aggressive and frightening for the object. The\nroot of his vision is in his belly, in the solar plexus. And he fights\nwith his teeth, and his heels, the sensual weapons.\n\nBoth these animals, however, are established in the sympathetic mode.\nThe life mode in both is sensitively sympathetic, or preponderantly\nsympathetic. Those animals which like cats, wolves, tigers, hawks,\nchiefly live from the great voluntary centers, these animals are, in\nour sense of the word, almost visionless. Sight in them is sharpened\nor narrowed down to a point: the object of prey. It is exclusive.\nThey see no more than this. And thus they see unthinkably far,\nunthinkably keenly.\n\nMost animals, however, smell what they see: vision is not very highly\ndeveloped. They know better by the more direct contact of scent.\n\nAnd vision in us becomes faulty because we proceed too much in one\nmode. We see too much, we attend too much. The dark, glancing\nsightlessness of the intent savage, the narrowed vision of the cat,\nthe single point of vision of the hawk--these we do not know any more.\nWe live far too much from the sympathetic centers, without the balance\nfrom the voluntary mode. And we live far, far too much from the\n_upper_ sympathetic center and voluntary center, in an endless\nobjective curiosity. Sight is the least sensual of all the senses. And\nwe strain ourselves to see, see, see--everything, everything through\nthe eye, in one mode of objective curiosity. There is nothing inside\nus, we stare endlessly at the outside. So our eyes begin to fail; to\nretaliate on us. We go short-sighted, almost in self-protection.\n\nHearing the last, and perhaps the deepest of the senses. And here\nthere is no choice. In every other faculty we have the power of\nrejection. We have a choice of vision. We can, if we choose, see in\nthe terms of the wonderful beyond, the world of light into which we go\nforth in joy to lose ourselves in it. Or we can see, as the Egyptians\nsaw, in the terms of their own dark souls: seeing the strangeness of\nthe creature outside, the gulf between it and them, but finally, its\nexistence in terms of themselves. They saw according to their own\nunchangeable idea, subjectively, they did not go forth from themselves\nto seek the wonder outside.\n\nThose are the two chief ways of sympathetic vision. We call our way\nthe objective, the Egyptian the subjective. But objective and\nsubjective are words that depend absolutely on your starting point.\nSpiritual and sensual are much more descriptive terms.\n\nBut there are, of course, also the two ways of volitional vision. We\ncan see with the endless modern critical sight, analytic, and at last\ndeliberately ugly. Or we can see as the hawk sees the one concentrated\nspot where beats the life-heart of our prey.\n\nIn the four modes of sight we have some choice. We have some choice to\nrefuse tastes or smells or touch. In hearing we have the minimum of\nchoice. Sound acts direct upon the great affective centers. We may\nvoluntarily quicken our hearing, or make it dull. But we have really\nno choice of what we hear. Our will is eliminated. Sound acts direct,\nalmost automatically, upon the affective centers. And we have no power\nof going forth from the ear. We are always and only recipient.\n\nNevertheless, sound acts upon us in various ways, according to the\nfour primary poles of consciousness. The singing of birds acts almost\nentirely upon the centers of the breast. Birds, which live by flight,\nimpelled from the strong conscious-activity of the breast and\nshoulders, have become for us symbols of the spirit, the upper mode of\nconsciousness. Their legs have become idle, almost insentient twigs.\nOnly the tail flirts from the center of the sensual will.\n\nBut their singing acts direct upon the upper, or spiritual centers in\nus. So does almost all our music, which is all Christian in tendency.\nBut modern music is analytical, critical, and it has discovered the\npower of ugliness. Like our martial music, it is of the upper plane,\nlike our martial songs, our fifes and our brass-bands. These act\ndirect upon the thoracic ganglion. Time was, however, when music acted\nupon the sensual centers direct. We hear it still in savage music,\nand in the roll of drums, and in the roaring of lions, and in the\nhowling of cats. And in some voices still we hear the deeper resonance\nof the sensual mode of consciousness. But the tendency is for\neverything to be brought on to the upper plane, whilst the lower plane\nis just worked automatically from the upper.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nFIRST GLIMMERINGS OF MIND\n\n\nWe can now see what is the true goal of education for a child. It is\nthe full and harmonious development of the four primary modes of\nconsciousness, always with regard to the individual nature of the\nchild.\n\nThe goal is _not_ ideal. The aim is _not_ mental consciousness. We\nwant _effectual_ human beings, not conscious ones. The final aim is\nnot _to know_, but _to be_. There never was a more risky motto than\nthat: _Know thyself_. You've got to know yourself as far as possible.\nBut not just for the sake of knowing. You've got to know yourself so\nthat you can at last _be_ yourself. \"Be yourself\" is the last motto.\n\nThe whole field of dynamic and effectual consciousness is _always_\npre-mental, non-mental. Not even the most knowing man that ever lived\nwould know how he would be feeling next week; whether some new and\nutterly shattering impulse would have arisen in him and laid his\nnicely-conceived self in ruins. It is the impulse we have to live by,\nnot the ideals or the idea. But we have to know ourselves pretty\nthoroughly before we can break the automatism of ideals and\nconventions. The savage in a state of nature is one of the most\nconventional of creatures. So is a child. Only through fine delicate\nknowledge can we recognize and release our impulses. Now our whole aim\nhas been to force each individual to a maximum of mental control, and\nmental consciousness. Our poor little plans of children are put into\nhorrible forcing-beds, called schools, and the young idea is there\nforced to shoot. It shoots, poor thing, like a potato in a warm\ncellar. One mass of pallid sickly ideas and ideals. And no root, no\nlife. The ideas shoot, hard enough, in our sad offspring, but they\nshoot at the expense of life itself. Never was such a mistake. Mental\nconsciousness is a purely individual affair. Some men are born to be\nhighly and delicately conscious. But for the vast majority, much\nmental consciousness is simply a catastrophe, a blight. It just stops\ntheir living.\n\nOur business, at the present, is to prevent at all cost the young idea\nfrom shooting. The ideal mind, the brain, has become the vampire of\nmodern life, sucking up the blood and the life. There is hardly an\noriginal thought or original utterance possible to us. All is sickly\nrepetition of stale, stale ideas.\n\nLet all schools be closed at once. Keep only a few technical training\nestablishments, nothing more. Let humanity lie fallow, for two\ngenerations at least. Let no child learn to read, unless it learns by\nitself, out of its own individual persistent desire.\n\nThat is my serious admonition, gentle reader. But I am not so flighty\nas to imagine you will pay any heed. But if I thought you would, I\nshould feel my hope surge up. And if you _don't_ pay any heed,\ncalamity will at length shut your schools for you, sure enough.\n\nThe process of transfer from the primary consciousness to recognized\nmental consciousness is a mystery like every other transfer. Yet it\nfollows its own laws. And here we begin to approach the confines of\northodox psychology, upon which we have no desire to trespass. But\nthis we _can_ say. The degree of transfer from primary to mental\nconsciousness varies with every individual. But in most individuals\nthe natural degree is very low.\n\nThe process of transfer from primary consciousness is called\nsublimation, the sublimating of the potential body of knowledge with\nthe definite reality of the idea. And with this process we have\nidentified all education. The very derivation of the Latin word\n_education_ shows us. Of course it should mean the leading forth of\neach nature to its fullness. But with us, fools that we are, it is the\nleading forth of the primary consciousness, the potential or dynamic\nconsciousness, into mental consciousness, which is finite and static.\nNow before we set out so gayly to lead our children _en bloc_ out of\nthe dynamic into the static way of consciousness, let us consider a\nmoment what we are doing.\n\nA child in the womb can have no _idea_ of the mother. I think orthodox\npsychology will allow us so much. And yet the child in the womb must\nbe dynamically conscious of the mother. Otherwise how could it\nmaintain a definite and progressively developing relation to her?\n\nThis consciousness, however, is utterly non-ideal, non-mental, purely\ndynamic, a matter of dynamic polarized intercourse of vital\nvibrations, as an exchange of wireless messages which are never\ntranslated from the pulse-rhythm into speech, because they have no\nneed to be. It is a dynamic polarized intercourse between the great\nprimary nuclei in the foetus and the corresponding nuclei in the\ndynamic maternal psyche.\n\nThis form of consciousness is established at conception, and continues\nlong after birth. Nay, it continues all life long. But the particular\ninterchange of dynamic consciousness between mother and child suffers\nno interruption at birth. It continues almost the same. The child has\nno conception whatsoever of the mother. It cannot see her, for its eye\nhas no focus. It can hear her, because hearing needs no transmission\ninto concept, but it has no oral notion of sounds. It knows her. But\nonly by a form of vital dynamic correspondence, a sort of magnetic\ninterchange. The idea does not intervene at all.\n\nGradually, however, the dark shadow of our object begins to loom in\nthe formless mind of the infant. The idea of the mother is, as it\nwere, gradually photographed on the cerebral plasm. It begins with the\nfaintest shadow--but the figure is gradually developed through years\nof experience. It is never quite completed.\n\nHow does the figure of the mother gradually develop as a _conception_\nin the child mind? It develops as the result of the positive and\nnegative reaction from the primary centers of consciousness. From the\nfirst great center of sympathy the child is drawn to a lovely oneing\nwith the mother. From the first great center of will comes the\nindependent self-assertion which locates the mother as something\noutside, something objective. And as a result of this twofold notion,\na twofold increase in the child. First, the dynamic establishment of\nthe individual consciousness in the infant: and then the first shadow\nof a mental conception of the mother, in the infant brain. The\ndevelopment of the _original_ mind in every child and every man always\nand only follows from the dual fulfillment in the dynamic\nconsciousness.\n\nBut mark further. Each time, after the fourfold interchange between\ntwo dynamic polarized lives, there results a development in the\nindividuality and a sublimation into consciousness, both\nsimultaneously in each party: _and this dual development causes at\nonce a diminution in the dynamic polarity between the two parties_.\nThat is, as its individuality and its mental concept of the mother\ndevelop in the child, there is a corresponding _waning_ of the dynamic\nrelation between the child and the mother. And this is the natural\nprogression of all love. As we have said before, the accomplishment of\nindividuality never finally exhausts the dynamic flow between parents\nand child. In the same way, a child can never have a finite conception\nof either of its parents. It can have a very much more finite,\nfinished conception of its aunts or its friends. The portrait of the\nparent can never be quite completed in the mind of the son or\ndaughter. As long as time lasts it must be left unfinished.\n\nNevertheless, the inevitable photography of time upon the mental plasm\ndoes print at last a very substantial portrait of the parent, a very\nwell-filled concept in the child mind. And the nearer a conception\ncomes towards finality, the nearer does the dynamic relation, out of\nwhich this concept has arisen, draw to a close. To know, is to lose.\nWhen I have a finished mental concept of a beloved, or a friend, then\nthe love and the friendship is dead. It falls to the level of an\nacquaintance. As soon as I have a finished mental conception, a full\nidea even of myself, then dynamically I am dead. To know is to die.\n\nBut knowledge and death are part of our natural development. Only, of\ncourse, most things can never be known by us in full. Which means we\ndo never absolutely die, even to our parents. So that Jesus' question\nto His mother, \"Woman, what have I to do with thee!\"--while\nexpressing a major truth, still has an exaggerated sound, which comes\nfrom its denial of the minor truth.\n\nThis progression from dynamic relationship towards a finished\nindividuality and a finished mental concept is carried on from the\nfour great primary centers through the correspondence medium of all\nthe senses and sensibilities. First of all, the child knows the mother\nonly through touch--perfect and immediate contact. And yet, from the\nmoment of conception, the egg-cell repudiated complete adhesion and\neven communication, and asserted its individual integrity. The child\nin the womb, perfect a contact though it may have with the mother, is\nall the time also dynamically polarized against this contact. From the\nfirst moment, this relation in touch has a dual polarity, and, no\ndoubt, a dual mode. It is a fourfold interchange of consciousness, the\nmoment the egg-cell has made its two spontaneous divisions.\n\nAs soon as the child is born, there is a real severance. The contact\nof touch is interrupted, it now becomes occasional only. True, the\ndynamic flow between mother and child is not severed when simple\nphysical contact is missing. Though mother and child may not touch,\nstill the dynamic flow continues between them. The mother knows her\nchild, feels her bowels and her breast drawn to it, even if it be a\nhundred miles away. But if the severance continue long, the dynamic\nflow begins to die, both in mother and child. It wanes fairly\nquickly--and perhaps can never be fully revived. The dynamic relation\nbetween parent and child may fairly easily fall into quiescence, a\nstatic condition.\n\nFor a full dynamic relationship it is necessary that there be actual\ncontact. The nerves run from the four primary dynamos, and end with\nlive ends all over the body. And it is necessary to bring the live\nends of the nerves of the child into contact with the live ends of\ncorresponding nerves in the mother, so that a pure circuit is\nestablished. Wherever a pure circuit is established, there occurs a\npure development in the individual creation, and this is inevitably\naccompanied by sensation; and sensation is the first term of mental\nknowledge.\n\nSo, from the field of the breast and arms, the upper circuit, and from\nthe field of the knees and feet and belly, the lower circuit.\n\nAnd then, the moment a child is born, the face is alive. And the face\ncommunicates direct with both planes of primary consciousness. The\nmoment a child is born, it begins to grope for the breast. And\nsuddenly a new great circuit is established, the four poles all\nworking at once, as the child sucks. There is the profound\ndesirousness of the lower center of sympathy, and the superior avidity\nof the center of will, and at the same time, the cleaving yearning to\nthe nipple, and the tiny curiosity of lips and gums. The nipple of the\nmother's breast is one of the great gates of the body, hence of the\nliving psyche. In the nipple terminate vivid nerves which flash their\nvery powerful vibrations through the mouth of the child and deep into\nits four great poles of being and knowing. Even the nipples of the man\nare gateways to the great dynamic flow: still gateways.\n\nTouch, taste, and smell are now active in the baby. And these senses,\nso-called, are strictly sensations. They are the first term of the\nchild's mental knowledge. And on these three _cerebral_ reactions the\nfoundation of the future mind is laid.\n\nThe moment there is a perfect polarized circuit between the first four\npoles of dynamic consciousness, at that moment does the mind, the\nterminal station, flash into cognition. The first cognition is merely\nsensation: sensation and the remembrance of sensation being the first\nelement in all knowing and in all conception.\n\nThe circuit of touch, taste, and smell must be well established,\nbefore the eyes begin actually to see. All mental knowledge is built\nup of sensation and of memory. It is the continually recurring\nsensation of the touch of the mother which forms the basis of the\nfirst conception of the mother. After that, the gradually\ndiscriminated taste of the mother, and scent of the mother. Till\ngradually sight and hearing develop and largely usurp the first three\nsenses, as medium of correspondence and of knowledge.\n\nAnd while, of course, the sensational _knowledge_ is being secreted in\nthe brain, in some much more mysterious way the living individuality\nof the child is being developed in the four first nuclei, the four\ngreat nerve-centers of the primary field of consciousness and being.\n\nAs time goes on, the child learns to see the mother. At first he sees\nher face as a blur, and though he knows her, knows her by a direct\nglow of communication, as if her face were a warm glowing life-lamp\nwhich rejoiced him. But gradually, as the circuit of touch, taste, and\nsmell become powerfully established; gradually, as the individual\ndevelops in the child, and so retreats towards isolation; gradually,\nas the child stands more immune from the mother, the circuit of\ncorrespondence extends, and the eyes now communicate across space, the\nears begin to discriminate sounds. Last of all develops discriminate\nhearing.\n\nNow gradually the picture of the mother is transferred to the child's\nmind, and the sound of the first baby-words is imprinted. And as the\nchild learns to discriminate visually, objectively, between the mother\nand the nurse, he learns to choose, and becomes individually free. And\nstill, the dynamic correspondence is not finished. It only changes its\ncircuit.\n\nWhile the brain is registering sensations, the four dynamic centers\nare coming into perfect relation. Or rather, as we see, the reverse is\nthe case. As the dynamic centers come into perfect relation, the mind\nregisters and remembers sensations, and begins consciously to know.\nBut the great field of activity is still and always the dynamic field.\nWhen a child learns to walk, it learns almost entirely from the solar\nplexus and the lumbar ganglion, the cardiac plexus and the thoracic\nganglion balancing the upper body.\n\nThere is a perfected circuit of polarity. The two lower centers are\nthe positive, the two upper the negative poles. And so the child\nstrikes out with his feet for the earth, presses, and strikes away\nagain from the earth, the two upper centers meanwhile corresponding\nimplicitly in the balance of the upper body. It is a chain of\nspontaneous activity in the four primary centers, establishing a\ncircuit through the whole body. But the positive poles are the lower\ncenters. And the brain has probably nothing at all to do with it. Even\nthe _desire_ to walk is not born in the brain, but in the primary\nnuclei.\n\nThe same with the use of the hands and arms. It means the\nestablishment of a pure circuit between the four centers, the two\nupper poles now being the positive, the lower the negative poles, and\nthe hands the live end of the wire. Again the brain is not concerned.\nProbably, even in the first deliberate grasping of an object, the\nbrain is not concerned. Not until there is an element of recognition\nand sensation-memory.\n\nAll our primal activity originates and circulates purely in the four\ngreat nerve centers. All our active desire, our genuine impulse, our\nlove, our hope, our yearning, everything originates mysteriously at\nthese four great centers or well-heads of our existence: everything\nvital and dynamic. The mind can only register that which results from\nthe emanation of the dynamic impulse and the collision or communion of\nthis impulse with its object.\n\nSo now we see that we can never know ourselves. Knowledge is to\nconsciousness what the signpost is to the traveler: just an indication\nof the way which has been traveled before. Knowledge is not even in\ndirect proportion to being. There may be great knowledge of chemistry\nin a man who is a rather poor _being_: and those who _know_, even in\nwisdom like Solomon, are often at the end of the matter of living, not\nat the beginning. As a matter of fact, David did the living, the\ndynamic achievement. To Solomon was left the consummation and the\nfinish, and the dying down.\n\nYet we _must_ know, if only in order to learn not to know. The supreme\nlesson of human consciousness is to learn how _not to know_. That is,\nhow not to _interfere_. That is, how to live dynamically, from the\ngreat Source, and not statically, like machines driven by ideas and\nprinciples from the head, or automatically, from one fixed desire. At\nlast, knowledge must be put into its true place in the living\nactivity of man. And we must know deeply, in order even to do that.\n\nSo a new conception of the meaning of education.\n\nEducation means leading out the individual nature in each man and\nwoman to its true fullness. You can't do that by stimulating the mind.\nTo pump education into the mind is fatal. That which sublimates from\nthe dynamic consciousness into the mental consciousness has alone any\nvalue. This, in most individuals, is very little indeed. So that most\nindividuals, under a wise government, would be most carefully\nprotected from all vicious attempts to inject extraneous ideas into\nthem. Every extraneous idea, which has no inherent root in the dynamic\nconsciousness, is as dangerous as a nail driven into a young tree. For\nthe mass of people, knowledge _must_ be symbolical, mythical, dynamic.\nThis means, you must have a higher, responsible, conscious class: and\nthen in varying degrees the lower classes, varying in their degree of\nconsciousness. Symbols must be true from top to bottom. But the\ninterpretation of the symbols must rest, degree after degree, in the\nhigher, responsible, conscious classes. To _those who cannot divest_\nthemselves again of mental consciousness and definite ideas, mentality\nand ideas are death, nails through their hands and feet.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nFIRST STEPS IN EDUCATION\n\n\nThe first process of education is obviously not a mental process. When\na mother talks to a baby, she is not encouraging its little mind to\nthink. When she is coaxing her child to walk, she is not making a\ntheoretic exposition of the science of equilibration. She crouches\nbefore the child, at a little distance, and spreads her hands. \"Come,\nbaby--come to mother. Come! Baby, walk! Yes, walk! Walk to mother!\nCome along. A little walk to its mother. Come! Come then! Why yes, a\npretty baby! Oh, he can toddle! Yes--yes--No, don't be frightened, a\ndear. No--Come to mother--\" and she catches his little pinafore by the\ntip--and the infant lurches forward. \"There! There! A beautiful walk!\nA beautiful walker, yes! Walked all the way to mother, baby did. Yes,\nhe did--\"\n\nNow who will tell me that this talk has any rhyme or reason? Not a\nspark of reason. Yet a real rhyme: or rhythm, much more important.\nThe song and the urge of the mother's voice plays direct on the\naffective centers of the child, a wonderful stimulus and tuition. The\nwords hardly matter. True, this constant repetition in the end forms a\nmental association. At the moment they have no mental significance at\nall for the baby. But they ring with a strange palpitating music in\nhis fluttering soul, and lift him into motion.\n\nAnd this is the way to educate children: the instinctive way of\nmothers. There should be no effort made to teach children to think, to\nhave ideas. Only to lift them and urge them into dynamic activity. The\nvoice of dynamic sound, not the words of understanding. Damn\nunderstanding. Gestures, and touch, and expression of the face, not\ntheory. Never have ideas about children--and never have ideas _for_\nthem.\n\nIf we are going to teach children we must teach them first to move.\nAnd not by rule or mental dictation. Horror! But by playing and\nteasing and anger, and amusement. A child must learn to move blithe\nand free and proud. It must learn the fullness of spontaneous motion.\nAnd this it can only learn by continuous reaction from all the\ncenters, through all the emotions. A child must learn to contain\nitself. It must learn to sit still if need be. Part of the first phase\nof education is the learning to stay still and be physically\nself-contained. Then a child must learn to be alone, and to adventure\nalone, and to play alone. Any peevish clinging should be quite roughly\nrebuffed. From the very first day, throw a child back on its own\nresources--even a little cruelly sometimes. But don't neglect it,\ndon't have a negative attitude to it. Play with it, tease it and roll\nit over as a dog her puppy, mock it when it is too timorous, laugh at\nit, scold it when it really bothers you--for a child must learn not to\nbother another person--and when it makes you genuinely angry, spank it\nsoundly. But always remember that it is a single little soul by\nitself; and that the responsibility for the wise, warm relationship is\nyours, the adult's.\n\nThen always watch its deportment. Above all things encourage a\nstraight backbone and proud shoulders. Above all things despise a\nslovenly movement, an ugly bearing and unpleasing manner. And make a\nmock of petulance and of too much timidity.\n\nWe are imbeciles to start bothering about love and so forth in a\nchild. Forget utterly that there is such a thing as emotional\nreciprocity. But never forget your own honor as an adult individual\ntowards a small individual. It is a question of honor, not of love.\n\nA tree grows straight when it has deep roots and is not too stifled.\nLove is a spontaneous thing, coming out of the spontaneous effectual\nsoul. As a deliberate principle it is an unmitigated evil. Also\nmorality which is based on ideas, or on an ideal, is an unmitigated\nevil. A child which is proud and free in its movements, in all its\ndeportment, will be quite as moral as need be. Honor is an instinct, a\nsuperb instinct which should be kept keenly alive. Immorality, vice,\ncrime, these come from a suppression or a collapse at one or other of\nthe great primary centers. If one of these centers fails to maintain\nits true polarity, then there is a physical or psychic derangement, or\nboth. And viciousness or crime are the result of a derangement in the\nprimary system. Pure morality is only an instinctive adjustment which\nthe soul makes in every circumstance, adjusting one thing to another\nlivingly, delicately, sensitively. There can be no law. Therefore, at\nevery cost and charge keep the first four centers alive and alert,\nactive, and vivid in reaction. And then you need fear no perversion.\nWhat we have done, in our era, is, first, we have tried as far as\npossible to suppress or subordinate the two sensual centers. We have\nso unduly insisted on and exaggerated the upper spiritual or selfless\nmode--the living in the other person and through the other\nperson--that we have caused already a dangerous over-balance in the\nnatural psyche.\n\nTo correct this we go one worse, and try to rule ourselves more and\nmore by the old ideas of sympathy and benevolence. We think that love\nand benevolence will cure anything. Whereas love and benevolence are\nour poison, poison to the giver, and still more poison to the\nreceiver. Poison only because there is practically _no_ spontaneous\nlove left in the world. It is all _will_, the fatal love-will and\ninsatiable morbid curiosity. The pure sympathetic mode of love long\nago broke down. There is now only deadly, exaggerated volition.\n\nThis is also why general education should be suppressed as soon as\npossible. We have fallen into a state of fixed, deadly will.\nEverything we do and say to our children in school tends simply to fix\nin them the same deadly will, under the pretence of pure love. Our\nidealism is the clue to our fixed will. Love, beauty, benevolence,\nprogress, these are the words we use. But the principle we evoke is a\nprinciple of barren, sanctified compulsion of all life. We want to put\nall life under compulsion. \"How to outwit the nerves,\" for\nexample.--And therefore, to save the children as far as possible,\nelementary education should be stopped at once.\n\nNo child should be sent to any sort of public institution before the\nage of ten years. If I could but advise, I would advise that this\nnotice should be sent through the length and breadth of the land.\n\n     \"Parents, the State can no longer be responsible for the\n     mind and character of your children. From the first day of\n     the coming year, all schools will be closed for an\n     indefinite period. Fathers, see that your boys are trained\n     to be men. Mothers, see that your daughters are trained to\n     be women.\n\n     \"All schools will shortly be converted either into public\n     workshops or into gymnasia. No child will be admitted into\n     the workshops under ten years of age. Active training in\n     primitive modes of fighting and gymnastics will be\n     compulsory for all boys over ten years of age.\n\n     \"All girls over ten years of age must attend at one domestic\n     workshop. All girls over ten years of age may, in addition,\n     attend at one workshop of skilled labor, or of technical\n     industry, or of art. Admission for three months' probation.\n\n     \"All boys over ten years of age must attend at one workshop\n     of domestic crafts, and at one workshop of skilled labor, or\n     of technical industry, or of art. A boy may choose, with his\n     parents' consent, his school of labor, or technical industry\n     or art, but the directors reserve the right to transfer him\n     to a more suitable department, if necessary, after a three\n     months' probation.\n\n     \"It is the intention of this State to form a body of active,\n     energetic citizens. The danger of a helpless, presumptuous,\n     news-paper-reading population is universally recognized.\n\n     \"All elementary education is left in the hands of the\n     parents, save such as is necessary to the different branches\n     of industry.\n\n     \"Schools of mental culture are free to all individuals over\n     fourteen years of age.\n\n     \"Universities are free to all who obtain the first culture\n     degree.\"\n\nThe fact is, our process of universal education is to-day so uncouth,\nso psychologically barbaric, that it is the most terrible menace to\nthe existence of our race. We seize hold of our children, and by\nparrot-compulsion we force into them a set of mental tricks. By\nunnatural and unhealthy compulsion we force them into a certain amount\nof cerebral activity. And then, after a few years, with a certain\nnumber of windmills in their heads, we turn them loose, like so many\ninferior Don Quixotes, to make a mess of life. All that they have\nlearnt in their heads has no reference at all to their dynamic souls.\nThe windmills spin and spin in a wind of words, Dulcinea del Toboso\nbeckons round every corner, and our nation of inferior Quixotes jumps\non and off tram-cars, trains, bicycles, motor-cars, buses, in one mad\nchase of the divine Dulcinea, who is all the time chewing chocolates\nand feeling very, very bored. It is no use telling the poor devils to\nstop. They read in the newspapers about more Dulcineas and more\nchivalry due to them and more horrid persons who injure the fair fame\nof these bored females. And round they skelter, after their own tails.\nThat is, when they are not forced to grind out their lives for a wage.\nThough work is the only thing that prevents our masses from going\nquite mad.\n\nTo tell the truth, ideas are the most dangerous germs mankind has ever\nbeen injected with. They are introduced into the brain by injection,\nin schools and by means of newspapers, and then we are done for.\n\nAn idea which is merely introduced into the brain, and started\nspinning there like some outrageous insect, is the cause of all our\nmisery to-day. Instead of living from the spontaneous centers, we live\nfrom the head. We chew, chew, chew at some theory, some idea. We\ngrind, grind, grind in our mental consciousness, till we are beside\nourselves. Our primary affective centers, our centers of spontaneous\nbeing, are so utterly ground round and automatized that they squeak in\nall stages of disharmony and incipient collapse. We are a people--and\nnot we alone--of idiots, imbeciles and epileptics, and we don't even\nknow we are raving.\n\nAnd all is due, directly and solely, to that hateful germ we call the\nIdeal. The Ideal is _always_ evil, no matter what ideal it be. No\nidea should ever be raised to a governing throne.\n\nThis does not mean that man should immediately cut off his head and\ntry to develop a pair of eyes in his breasts. But it does mean this:\nthat an idea is just the final concrete or registered result of living\ndynamic interchange and reactions: that no idea is ever perfectly\nexpressed until its dynamic cause is finished; and that to continue to\nput into dynamic effect an already perfected idea means the\nnullification of all living activity, the substitution of mechanism,\nand all the resultant horrors of _ennui_, ecstasy, neurasthenia, and a\ncollapsing psyche.\n\nThe whole tree of our idea of life and living is dead. Then let us\nleave off hanging ourselves and our children from its branches like\nmedlars.\n\nThe idea, the actual idea, must rise ever fresh, ever displaced, like\nthe leaves of a tree, from out of the quickness of the sap, and\naccording to the forever incalculable effluence of the great dynamic\ncenters of life. The tree of life is a gay kind of tree that is\nforever dropping its leaves and budding out afresh, quite different\nones. If the last lot were thistle leaves, the next lot may be vine.\nYou never can tell with the Tree of Life.\n\nSo we come back to that precious child who costs us such a lot of\nink. By what right, I ask you, are we going to inject into him our own\ndisease-germs of ideas and infallible motives? By the right of the\ndiseased, who want to infect everybody.\n\nThere are _few, few people_ in whom the living impulse and reaction\ndevelops and sublimates into mental consciousness. There are all kinds\nof trees in the forest. But few of them indeed bear the apples of\nknowledge. The modern world insists, however, that every individual\nshall bear the apples of knowledge. So we go through the forest of\nmankind, cut back every tree, and try to graft it into an apple-tree.\nA nice wood of monsters we make by so doing.\n\nIt is not the _nature_ of most men to know and to understand and to\nreason very far. Therefore, why should they make a pretense of it? It\nis the nature of some few men to reason, then let them reason. Those\nwhose nature it is to be rational will instinctively ask why and\nwherefore, and wrestle with themselves for an answer. But why every\nTom, Dick and Harry should have the why and wherefore of the universe\nrammed into him, and should be allowed to draw the conclusion hence\nthat he is the ideal person and responsible for the universe, I don't\nknow. It is a lie anyway--for neither the whys nor the wherefores are\nhis own, and he is but a parrot with his nut of a universe.\n\nWhy should we cram the mind of a child with facts that have nothing to\ndo with his own experiences, and have no relation to his own dynamic\nactivity? Let us realize that every extraneous idea effectually\nintroduced into a man's mind is a direct obstruction of his dynamic\nactivity. Every idea which is introduced from outside into a man's\nmind, and which does not correspond to his own dynamic nature, is a\nfatal stumbling-block for that man: is a cause of arrest for his true\nindividual activity, and a derangement to his psychic being.\n\nFor instance, if I teach a man the idea that all men are equal. Now\nthis idea has no foundation in experience, but is logically deduced\nfrom certain ethical or philosophic principles. But there is a disease\nof idealism in the world, and we all are born with it. Particularly\nteachers are born with it. So they seize on the idea of equality, and\nproceed to instil it. With what result? Your man is no longer a man,\nliving his own life from his own spontaneous centers. He is a\ntheoretic imbecile trying to frustrate and dislocate all life.\n\nIt is the death of all life to force a pure _idea_ into practice. Life\nmust be lived from the deep, self-responsible spontaneous centers of\nevery individual, in a vital, _non-ideal_ circuit of dynamic relation\nbetween individuals. The passions or desires which are thought-born\nare deadly. Any particular mode of passion or desire which receives an\nexclusive ideal sanction at once becomes poisonous.\n\nIf this is true for men, it is much more true for women. Teach a woman\nto act from an idea, and you destroy her womanhood for ever. Make a\nwoman self-conscious, and her soul is barren as a sandbag. Why were we\ndriven out of Paradise? Why did we fall into this gnawing disease of\nunappeasable dissatisfaction? Not because we sinned. Ah, no. All the\nanimals in Paradise enjoyed the sensual passion of coition. Not\nbecause we sinned. But because we got our sex into our head.\n\nWhen Eve ate that particular apple, she became aware of her own\nwomanhood, mentally. And mentally she began to experiment with it. She\nhas been experimenting ever since. So has man. To the rage and horror\nof both of them.\n\nThese sexual experiments are really anathema. But once a woman is\nsexually self-conscious, what is she to do? There it is, she is born\nwith the disease of her own self-consciousness, as was her mother\nbefore her. She is bound to experiment and try one idea after another,\nin the long run always to her own misery. She is bound to have fixed\none, and then another idea of herself, herself as woman. First she is\nthe noble spouse of a not-quite-so-noble male: then a _Mater\nDolorosa_: then a ministering Angel: then a competent social unit, a\nMember of Parliament or a Lady Doctor or a platform speaker: and all\nthe while, as a side show, she is the Isolde of some Tristan, or the\nGuinevere of some Lancelot, or the Fata Morgana of all men--in her own\nidea. She can't stop having an idea of herself. She can't get herself\nout of her own head. And there she is, functioning away from her own\nhead and her own consciousness of herself and her own automatic\nself-will, till the whole man and woman game has become just a hell,\nand men with any backbone would rather kill themselves than go on with\nit--or kill somebody else.\n\nYet we are going to inculcate more and more self-consciousness, teach\nevery little Mary to be more and more a nice little Mary out of her\nown head, and every little Joseph to theorize himself up to the\nscratch.\n\nAnd the point lies here. There will _have_ to come an end. Every race\nwhich has become self-conscious and idea-bound in the past has\nperished. And then it has all started afresh, in a different way, with\nanother race. And man has never learnt any better. We are really far,\nfar more life-stupid than the dead Greeks or the lost Etruscans. Our\nday is pretty short, and closing fast. We can pass, and another race\ncan follow later.\n\nBut there is another alternative. We still have in us the power to\ndiscriminate between our own idealism, our own self-conscious will,\nand that other reality, our own true spontaneous self. Certainly we\nare so overloaded and diseased with ideas that we can't get well in a\nminute. But we can set our faces stubbornly against the disease, once\nwe recognize it. The disease of love, the disease of \"spirit,\" the\ndisease of niceness and benevolence and feeling good on our own behalf\nand good on somebody else's behalf. Pah, it is all a gangrene. We can\nretreat upon the proud, isolate self, and remain there alone, like\nlepers, till we are cured of this ghastly white disease of\nself-conscious idealism.\n\nAnd we really can make a move on our children's behalf. We really can\nrefrain from thrusting our children any more into those hot-beds of\nthe self-conscious disease, schools. We really can prevent their\neating much more of the tissues of leprosy, newspapers and books. For\na time, there should be no compulsory teaching to read and write at\nall. _The great mass of humanity should never learn to read and\nwrite_--_never_.\n\nAnd instead of this gnawing, gnawing disease of mental consciousness\nand awful, unhealthy craving for stimulus and for action, we must\nsubstitute genuine action. The war was really not a bad beginning. But\nwe went out under the banners of idealism, and now the men are home\nagain, the virus is more active than ever, rotting their very souls.\n\nThe mass of the people will never _mentally understand_. But they will\nsoon instinctively fall into line.\n\nLet us substitute action, all kinds of action, for the mass of people,\nin place of mental activity. Even twelve hours' work a day is better\nthan a newspaper at four in the afternoon and a grievance for the rest\nof the evening. But particularly let us take care of the children. At\nall cost, try to prevent a girl's mind from dwelling on herself, Make\nher act, work, play: assume a rule over her girlhood. Let her learn\nthe domestic arts in their perfection. Let us even artificially set\nher to spin and weave. Anything to keep her busy, to prevent her\nreading and becoming self-conscious. Let us awake as soon as possible\nto the repulsive machine quality of machine-made things. They smell of\ndeath. And let us insist that the home is sacred, the hearth, and the\nvery things of the home. Then keep the girls apart from any\nfamiliarity or being \"pals\" with the boys. The nice clean intimacy\nwhich we now so admire between the sexes is sterilizing. It makes\nneuters. Later on, no deep, magical sex-life is possible.\n\nThe same with the boys. First and foremost establish a rule over them,\na proud, harsh, manly rule. Make them _know_ that at every moment they\nare in the shadow of a proud, strong, adult authority. Let them be\nsoldiers, but as individuals not machine units. There are wars in the\nfuture, great wars, which not machines will finally decide, but the\nfree, indomitable life spirit. No more wars under the banners of the\nideal, and in the spirit of sacrifice. But wars in the strength of\nindividual men. And then, pure individualistic training to fight, and\npreparation for a whole new way of life, a new society. Put money\ninto its place, and science and industry. The leaders must stand for\nlife, and they must not ask the simple followers to point out the\ndirection. When the leaders assume responsibility they relieve the\nfollowers forever of the burden of finding a way. Relieved of this\nhateful incubus of responsibility for general affairs, the populace\ncan again become free and happy and spontaneous, leaving matters to\ntheir superiors. No newspapers--the mass of the people never learning\nto read. The evolving once more of the great spontaneous gestures of\nlife.\n\nWe can't go on as we are. Poor, nerve-worn creatures, fretting our\nlives away and hating to die because we have never lived. The secret\nis, to commit into the hands of the sacred few the responsibility\nwhich now lies like torture on the mass. Let the few, the leaders, be\nincreasingly responsible for the whole. And let the mass be free:\nfree, save for the choice of leaders.\n\nLeaders--this is what mankind is craving for.\n\nBut men must be prepared to obey, body and soul, once they have chosen\nthe leader. And let them choose the leader for life's sake only.\n\nBegin then--there is a beginning.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nEDUCATION AND SEX IN MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD\n\n\nThe one thing we have to avoid, then, even while we carry on our own old\nprocess of education, is this development of the powers of so-called\nself-expression in a child. Let us beware of artificially stimulating\nhis self-consciousness and his so-called imagination. All that we do is\nto pervert the child into a ghastly state of self-consciousness, making\nhim affectedly try to show off as we wish him to show off. The moment\nthe least little trace of self-consciousness enters in a child, good-by\nto everything except falsity.\n\nMuch better just pound away at the ABC and simple arithmetic and so\non. The modern methods do make children sharp, give them a sort of\nslick finesse, but it is the beginning of the mischief. It ends in the\ngreat \"unrest\" of a nervous, hysterical proletariat. Begin to teach a\nchild of five to \"understand.\" To understand the sun and moon and\ndaisy and the secrets of procreation, bless your soul. Understanding\nall the way.--And when the child is twenty he'll have a hysterical\nunderstanding of his own invented grievance, and there's an end of\nhim. Understanding is the devil.\n\nA child mustn't understand things. He must have them his own way. His\nvision isn't ours. When a boy of eight sees a horse, he doesn't see\nthe correct biological object we intend him to see. He sees a big\nliving presence of no particular shape with hair dangling from its\nneck and four legs. If he puts two eyes in the profile, he is quite\nright. Because he does _not_ see with optical, photographic vision.\nThe image on his retina is _not_ the image of his consciousness. The\nimage on his retina just does not go into him. His unconsciousness is\nfilled with a strong, dark, vague prescience of a powerful presence, a\ntwo-eyed, four-legged, long-maned presence looming imminent.\n\nAnd to _force_ the boy to see a correct one-eyed horse-profile is just\nlike pasting a placard in front of his vision. It simply kills his\ninward seeing. We don't _want_ him to see a proper horse. The child is\n_not_ a little camera. He is a small vital organism which has direct\ndynamic _rapport_ with the objects of the outer universe. He\nperceives from his breast and his abdomen, with deep-sunken realism,\nthe elemental nature of the creature. So that to this day a Noah's Ark\ntree is more real than a Corot tree or a Constable tree: and a flat\nNoah's Ark cow has a deeper vital reality than even a Cuyp cow.\n\nThe mode of vision is not one and final. The mode of vision is\nmanifold. And the optical image is a mere vibrating blur to a\nchild--and, indeed, to a passionate adult. In this vibrating blur the\nsoul sees its own true correspondent. It sees, in a cow, horns and\nsquareness, and a long tail. It sees, for a horse, a mane, and a long\nface, round nose, and four legs. And in each case a darkly vital\npresence. Now horns and squareness and a long thin ox-tail, these are\nthe fearful and wonderful elements of the cow-form, which the dynamic\nsoul perfectly perceives. The ideal-image is just outside nature, for\na child--something false. In a picture, a child wants elemental\nrecognition, and not correctness or expression, or least of all, what\nwe call understanding. The child distorts inevitably and dynamically.\nBut the dynamic abstraction is more than mental. If a huge eye sits in\nthe middle of the cheek, in a child's drawing, this shows that the\ndeep dynamic consciousness of the eye, its relative exaggeration, is\nthe life-truth, even if it is a scientific falsehood.\n\nOn the other hand, what on earth is the good of saying to a child,\n\"The world is a flattened sphere, like an orange.\" It is simply\npernicious. You had much better say the world is a poached egg in a\nfrying pan. _That_ might have some dynamic meaning. The only thing\nabout the flattened orange is that the child just sees this orange\ndisporting itself in blue air, and never bothers to associate it with\nthe earth he treads on. And yet it would be so much better for the\nmass of mankind if they never heard of the flattened sphere. They\nshould never be told that the earth is round. It only makes everything\nunreal to them. They are balked in their impression of the flat good\nearth, they can't get over this sphere business, they live in a fog of\nabstraction, and nothing is anything. Save for purposes of\nabstraction, the earth is a great plain, with hills and valleys. Why\nforce abstractions and kill the reality, when there's no need?\n\nAs for children, will we never realize that their abstractions are\nnever based on observations, but on subjective exaggerations? If there\nis an eye in the face, the face is all eye. It is the child soul\nwhich cannot get over the mystery of the eye. If there is a tree in a\nlandscape, the landscape is all tree. Always this partial focus. The\nattempt to make a child focus for a whole view--which is really a\ngeneralization and an adult abstraction--is simply wicked. Yet the\nfirst thing we do is to set a child making relief-maps in clay, for\nexample: of his own district. Imbecility! He has not even the faintest\nimpression of the total hill on which his home stands. A steepness\ngoing up to a door--and front garden railings--and perhaps windows.\nThat's the lot.\n\nThe top and bottom of it is, that it is a crime to teach a child\nanything at all, school-wise. It is just evil to collect children\ntogether and teach them through the head. It causes absolute\nstarvation in the dynamic centers, and sterile substitute of brain\nknowledge is all the gain. The children of the middle classes are so\nvitally impoverished, that the miracle is they continue to exist at\nall. The children of the lower classes do better, because they escape\ninto the streets. But even the children of the proletariat are now\ninfected.\n\nAnd, of course, as my critics point out, under all the school-smarm\nand newspaper-cant, man is to-day as savage as a cannibal, and more\ndangerous. The living dynamic self is denaturalized instead of being\neducated.\n\nWe talk about education--leading forth the natural intelligence of a\nchild. But ours is just the opposite of leading forth. It is a ramming\nin of brain facts through the head, and a consequent distortion,\nsuffocation, and starvation of the primary centers of consciousness. A\nnice day of reckoning we've got in front of us.\n\nLet us lead forth, by all means. But let us not have mental knowledge\nbefore us as the goal of the leading. Much less let us make of it a\nvicious circle in which we lead the unhappy child-mind, like a cow in\na ring at a fair. We don't want to educate children so that they may\nunderstand. Understanding is a fallacy and a vice in most people. I\ndon't even want my child to know, much less to understand. _I_ don't\nwant my child to know that five fives are twenty-five, any more than I\nwant my child to wear my hat or my boots. I _don't_ want my child to\n_know_. If he wants five fives let him count them on his fingers. As\nfor his little mind, give it a rest, and let his dynamic self be\nalert. He will ask \"why\" often enough. But he more often asks why the\nsun shines, or why men have mustaches, or why grass is green, than\nanything sensible. Most of a child's questions are, and should be,\nunanswerable. They are not questions at all. They are exclamations of\nwonder, they are _remarks_ half-sceptically addressed. When a child\nsays, \"Why is grass green?\" he half implies. \"Is it really green, or\nis it just taking me in?\" And we solemnly begin to prate about\nchlorophyll. Oh, imbeciles, idiots, inexcusable owls!\n\nThe whole of a child's development goes on from the great dynamic\ncenters, and is basically non-mental. To introduce mental activity is\nto arrest the dynamic activity, and stultify true dynamic development.\nBy the age of twenty-one our young people are helpless, hopeless,\nselfless, floundering mental entities, with nothing in front of them,\nbecause they have been starved from the roots, systematically, for\ntwenty-one years, and fed through the head. They have had all their\nmental excitements, sex and everything, all through the head, and when\nit comes to the actual thing, why, there's nothing in it. _Blase._ The\naffective centers have been exhausted from the head.\n\nBefore the age of fourteen, children should be taught only to move, to\nact, to _do_. And they should be taught as little as possible even of\nthis. Adults simply cannot and do not know any more what the mode of\nchildish intelligence is. Adults _always_ interfere. They _always_\nforce the adult mental mode. Therefore children must be preserved from\nadult instructions.\n\nMake a child work--yes. Make it do little jobs. Keep a fine and\ndelicate and fierce discipline, so that the little jobs are performed\nas perfectly as is consistent with the child's nature. Make the child\nalert, proud, and becoming in its movements. Make it know very\ndefinitely that it shall not and must not trespass on other people's\nprivacy or patience. Teach it songs, tell it tales. But _never_\ninstruct it school-wise. And mostly, leave it alone, send it away to\nbe with other children and to get in and out of mischief, and in and\nout of danger. Forget your child altogether as much as possible.\n\nAll this is the active and strenuous business of parents, and must not\nbe shelved off on to strangers. It is the business of parents\n_mentally_ to forget but dynamically never to forsake their children.\n\nIt is no use expecting parents to know _why_ schools are closed, and\n_why_ they, the parents, must be quite responsible for their own\nchildren during the first ten years. If it is quite useless to expect\nparents to understand a theory of relativity, much less will they\nunderstand the development of the dynamic consciousness. But why should\nthey understand? It is the business of very few to understand and for\nthe mass, it is their business to believe and not to bother, but to be\nhonorable and humanly to fulfill their human responsibilities. To give\nactive obedience to their leaders, and to possess their own souls in\nnatural pride.\n\nSome must understand why a child is not to be mentally educated. Some\nmust have a faint inkling of the processes of consciousness during the\nfirst fourteen years. Some must know what a child beholds, when it\nlooks at a horse, and what it means when it says, \"Why is grass\ngreen?\" The answer to this question, by the way, is \"Because it is.\"\n\nThe interplay of the four dynamic centers follows no one conceivable\nlaw. Mental activity continues according to a law of co-relation. But\nthere is no logical or rational co-relation in the dynamic\nconsciousness. It pulses on inconsequential, and it would be\nimpossible to determine any sequence. Out of the very lack of sequence\nin dynamic consciousness does the individual himself develop. The\ndynamic abstraction of a child's precepts follows no mental law, and\neven no law which can ever be mentally propounded. And this is why it\nis utterly pernicious to set a child making a clay relief-map of its\nown district, or to ask a child to draw conclusions from given\nobservations. Dynamically, a child draws no conclusions. All things\nstill remain dynamically possible. A conclusion drawn is a nail in the\ncoffin of a child's developing being. Let a child make a clay\nlandscape, if it likes. But entirely according to its own fancy, and\nwithout conclusions drawn. Only, let the landscape be vividly\nmade--always the discipline of the soul's full attention. \"Oh, but\nwhere are the factory chimneys?\"--or else--\"Why have you left out the\ngas-works?\" or \"Do you call that sloppy thing a church?\" The\nparticular focus should be vivid, and the record in some way true. The\nsoul must give earnest attention, that is all.\n\nAnd so actively disciplined, the child develops for the first ten\nyears. We need not be afraid of letting children see the passions and\nreactions of adult life. Only we must not strain the _sympathies_ of a\nchild, in _any_ direction, particularly the direction of love and\npity. Nor must we introduce the fallacy of right and wrong.\nSpontaneous distaste should take the place of right and wrong. And\nleast of all must there be a cry: \"You see, dear, you don't\nunderstand. When you are older--\" A child's sagacity is better than an\nadult understanding, anyhow.\n\nOf course it is ten times criminal to tell young children facts about\nsex, or to implicate them in adult relationships. A child has a strong\nevanescent sex consciousness. It instinctively writes impossible words\non back walls. But this is not a fully conscious mental act. It is a\nkind of dream act--quite natural. The child's curious, shadowy,\nindecent sex-knowledge is quite in the course of nature. And does\nnobody any harm at all. Adults had far better not notice it. But if a\nchild sees a cockerel tread a hen, or two dogs coupling, well and\ngood. It _should_ see these things. Only, without comment. Let nothing\nbe exaggeratedly hidden. By instinct, let us preserve the decent\nprivacies. But if a child occasionally sees its parent nude, taking a\nbath, all the better. Or even sitting in the W. C. Exaggerated secrecy\nis bad. But indecent exposure is also very bad. But worst of all is\ndragging in the _mental_ consciousness of these shadowy dynamic\nrealities.\n\nIn the same way, to talk to a child about an adult is vile. Let\nadults keep their adult feelings and communications for people of\ntheir own age. But if a child sees its parents violently quarrel, all\nthe better. There must be storms. And a child's dynamic understanding\nis far deeper and more penetrating than our sophisticated\ninterpretation. But _never_ make a child a party to adult affairs.\nNever drag the child in. Refuse its sympathy on such occasions. Always\ntreat it as if it had _no_ business to hear, even if it is present and\n_must_ hear. Truly, it has no business mentally to hear. And the\ndynamic soul will always weigh things up and dispose of them properly,\nif there be no interference of adult comment or adult desire for\nsympathy. It is despicable for any one parent to accept a child's\nsympathy against the other parent. And the one who _received_ the\nsympathy is always more contemptible than the one who is hated.\n\nOf course so many children are born to-day unnaturally mentally awake\nand alive to adult affairs, that there is nothing left but to tell\nthem everything, crudely: or else, much better, to say: \"Ah, get out,\nyou know too much, you make me sick.\"\n\nTo return to the question of sex. A child is born sexed. A child is\neither male or female, in the whole of its psyche and physique is\neither male or female. Every single living cell is either male or\nfemale, and will remain either male or female as long as life lasts.\nAnd every single cell in every male child is male, and every cell in\nevery female child is female. The talk about a third sex, or about the\nindeterminate sex, is just to pervert the issue.\n\nBiologically, it is true, the rudimentary formation of both sexes is\nfound in every individual. That doesn't mean that every individual is\na bit of both, or either, _ad lib._ After a sufficient period of\nidealism, men become hopelessly self-conscious. That is, the great\naffective centers no longer act spontaneously, but always wait for\ncontrol from the head. This always breeds a great fluster in the\npsyche, and the poor self-conscious individual cannot help posing and\nposturing. Our ideal has taught us to be gentle and wistful: rather\ngirlish and yielding, and _very_ yielding in our sympathies. In fact,\nmany young men feel so very like what they imagine a girl must feel,\nthat hence they draw the conclusion that they must have a large share\nof female sex inside them. False conclusion.\n\nThese girlish men have often, to-day, the finest maleness, once it is\nput to the test. How is it then that they feel, and look, so girlish?\nIt is largely a question of the direction of the polarized flow. Our\nideal has taught us to be _so_ loving and _so_ submissive and _so_\nyielding in our sympathy, that the mode has become automatic in many\nmen. Now in what we will call the \"natural\" mode, man has his\npositivity in the volitional centers, and women in the sympathetic. In\nfulfilling the Christian love ideal, however, men have reversed this.\nMan has assumed the gentle, all-sympathetic role, and woman has become\nthe energetic party, with the authority in her hands. The male is the\nsensitive, sympathetic nature, the woman the active, effective,\nauthoritative. So that the male acts as the passive, or recipient pole\nof attraction, the female as the active, positive, exertive pole, in\nhuman relations. Which is a reversal of the old flow. The woman is now\nthe initiator, man the responder. They seem to play each other's\nparts. But man is purely male, playing woman's part, and woman is\npurely female, however manly. The gulf between Heliogabalus, or the\nmost womanly man on earth, and the most manly woman, is just the same\nas ever: just the same old gulf between the sexes. The man is male,\nthe woman is female. Only they are playing one another's parts, as\nthey must at certain periods. The dynamic polarity has swung around.\n\nIf we look a little closer, we can define this positive and negative\nbusiness better. As a matter of fact, positive and negative, passive\nand active cuts both ways. If the man, as thinker and doer, is active,\nor positive, and the woman negative, then, on the other hand, as the\ninitiator of emotion, of feeling, and of sympathetic understanding the\nwoman is positive, the man negative. The man may be the initiator in\naction, but the woman is initiator in emotion. The man has the\ninitiative as far as voluntary activity goes, and the woman the\ninitiative as far as sympathetic activity goes. In love, it is the\nwoman naturally who loves, the man who is loved. In love, woman is the\npositive, man the negative. It is woman who asks, in love, and man who\nanswers. In life, the reverse is the case. In knowing and in doing,\nman is positive and woman negative: man initiates, and woman lives up\nto it.\n\nNaturally this nicely arranged order of things may be reversed. Action\nand utterance, which are male, are polarized against feeling, emotion,\nwhich are female. And which is positive, which negative? Was man, the\neternal protagonist, born of woman, from her womb of fathomless\nemotion? Or was woman, with her deep womb of emotion, born from the\nrib of active man, the first created? Man, the doer, the knower, the\noriginal in _being_, is he lord of life? Or is woman, the great\nMother, who bore us from the womb of love, is she the supreme Goddess?\n\nThis is the question of all time. And as long as man and woman endure,\nso will the answer be given, first one way, then the other. Man, as\nthe utterer, usually claims that Eve was created out of his spare rib:\nfrom the field of the creative, upper dynamic consciousness, that is.\nBut woman, as soon as she gets a word in, points to the fact that man\ninevitably, poor darling, is the issue of his mother's womb. So the\nbattle rages.\n\nBut some men always agree with the woman. Some men always yield to\nwoman the creative positivity. And in certain periods, such as the\npresent, the majority of men concur in regarding woman as the source\nof life, the first term in creation: woman, the mother, the prime\nbeing.\n\nAnd then, the whole polarity shifts over. Man still remains the doer\nand thinker. But he is so only in the service of emotional and\nprocreative woman. His highest moment is now the emotional moment when\nhe gives himself up to the woman, when he forms the perfect answer\nfor her great emotional and procreative asking. All his thinking, all\nhis activity in the world only contributes to this great moment, when\nhe is fulfilled in the emotional passion of the woman, the birth of\nrebirth, as Whitman calls it. In his consummation in the emotional\npassion of a woman, man is reborn, which is quite true.\n\nAnd there is the point at which we all now stick. Life, thought, and\nactivity, all are devoted truly to the great end of Woman, wife and\nmother.\n\nMan has now entered on to his negative mode. Now, his consummation is\nin feeling, not in action. Now, his activity is all of the domestic\norder and all his thought goes to proving that nothing matters except\nthat birth shall continue and woman shall rock in the nest of this\nglobe like a bird who covers her eggs in some tall tree. Man is the\nfetcher, the carrier, the sacrifice, the crucified, and the reborn of\nwoman.\n\nThis being so, the whole tendency of his nature changes. Instead of\nbeing assertive and rather insentient, he becomes wavering and\nsensitive. He begins to have as many feelings--nay, more than a woman.\nHis heroism is all in altruistic endurance. He worships pity and\ntenderness and weakness, even in himself. In short, he takes on very\nlargely the original role of woman. Woman meanwhile becomes the\nfearless, inwardly relentless, determined positive party. She grips\nthe responsibility. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.\nNay, she makes man discover that cradles should not be rocked, in\norder that her hands may be left free. She is now a queen of the\nearth, and inwardly a fearsome tyrant. She keeps pity and tenderness\nemblazoned on her banners. But God help the man whom she pities.\nUltimately she tears him to bits.\n\nTherefore we see the reversal of the old poles. Man becomes the\nemotional party, woman the positive and active. Man begins to show\nstrong signs of the peculiarly strong passive sex desire, the desire\nto be taken, which is considered characteristic of woman. Man begins\nto have all the feelings of woman--or all the feelings which he\nattributed to woman. He becomes more feminine than woman ever was, and\nworships his own femininity, calling it the highest. In short, he\nbegins to exhibit all signs of sexual complexity. He begins to imagine\nhe really is half female. And certainly woman seems very male. So the\nhermaphrodite fallacy revives again.\n\nBut it is all a fallacy. Man, in the midst of all his effeminacy, is\nstill male and nothing but male. And woman, though she harangue in\nParliament or patrol the streets with a helmet on her head, is still\ncompletely female. They are only playing each other's roles, because\nthe poles have swung into reversion. The compass is reversed. But that\ndoesn't mean that the north pole has become the south pole, or that\neach is a bit of both.\n\nOf course a woman should stick to her own natural emotional\npositivity. But then man must stick to his own positivity of _being_,\nof action, _disinterested, non-domestic, male_ action, which is not\ndevoted to the increase of the female. Once man vacates his camp of\nsincere, passionate positivity in disinterested being, his supreme\nresponsibility to fulfill his own profoundest impulses, with reference\nto none but God or his own soul, not taking woman into count at all,\nin this primary responsibility to his own deepest soul; once man\nvacates this strong citadel of his own genuine, not spurious,\ndivinity; then in comes woman, picks up the scepter and begins to\nconduct a rag-time band.\n\nMan remains man, however he may put on wistfulness and tenderness like\npetticoats, and sensibilities like pearl ornaments. Your sensitive\nlittle big-eyed boy, so much more gentle and loving than his harder\nsister, is male for all that, believe me. Perhaps evilly male, so\nmothers may learn to their cost: and wives still more.\n\nOf course there should be a great balance between the sexes. Man, in\nthe daytime, must follow his own soul's greatest impulse, and give\nhimself to life-work and risk himself to death. It is not woman who\nclaims the highest in man. It is a man's own religious soul that\ndrives him on beyond woman, to his supreme activity. For his highest,\nman is responsible to God alone. He may not pause to remember that he\nhas a life to lose, or a wife and children to leave. He must carry\nforward the banner of life, though seven worlds perish, with all the\nwives and mothers and children in them. Hence Jesus, \"Woman, what have\nI to do with thee?\" Every man that lives has to say it again to his\nwife or mother, once he has any work or mission in hand, that comes\nfrom his soul.\n\nBut again, no man is a blooming marvel for twenty-four hours a day.\nJesus or Napoleon or any other of them ought to have been man enough\nto be able to come home at tea-time and put his slippers on and sit\nunder the spell of his wife. For there you are, the woman has her\nworld, her positivity: the world of love, of emotion, of sympathy. And\nit behooves every man in his hour to take off his shoes and relax and\ngive himself up to his woman and her world. Not to give up his\npurpose. But to give up himself for a time to her who is his\nmate.--And so it is one detests the clock-work Kant, and the\npetit-bourgeois Napoleon divorcing his Josephine for a Hapsburg--or\neven Jesus, with his \"Woman, what have I to do with thee?\"--He might\nhave added \"just now.\"--They were all failures.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nTHE BIRTH OF SEX\n\n\nThe last chapter was a chapter of semi-digression. We now return to\nthe straight course. Is the straightness none too evident? Ah well,\nit's a matter of relativity. A child is born with one sex only, and\nremains always single in his sex. There is no intermingling, only a\ngreat change of roles is possible. But man in the female role is still\nmale.\n\nSex--that is to say, maleness and femaleness--is present from the\nmoment of birth, and in every act or deed of every child. But sex in\nthe real sense of dynamic sexual relationship, this does not exist in\na child, and cannot exist until puberty and after. True, children have\na sort of sex consciousness. Little boys and little girls may even\ncommit indecencies together. And still it is nothing vital. It is a\nsort of shadow activity, a sort of dream-activity. It has no very\nprofound effect.\n\nBut still, boys and girls should be kept apart as much as possible,\nthat they may have some sort of respect and fear for the gulf that\nlies between them in nature, and for the great strangeness which each\nhas to offer the other, finally. We are all wrong when we say there is\nno vital difference between the sexes. There is every difference.\nEvery bit, every cell in a boy is male, every cell is female in a\nwoman, and must remain so. Women can never feel or know as men do. And\nin the reverse men can never feel and know, dynamically, as women do.\nMan, acting in the passive or feminine polarity, is still man, and he\ndoesn't have one single unmanly feeling. And women, when they speak\nand write, utter not one single word that men have not taught them.\nMen learn their feelings from women, women learn their mental\nconsciousness from men. And so it will ever be. Meanwhile, women live\nforever by feeling, and men live forever from an inherent sense of\n_purpose_. Feeling is an end in itself. This is unspeakable truth to a\nwoman, and never true for one minute to a man. When man, in the\nEpicurean spirit, embraces feeling, he makes himself a martyr to\nit--like Maupassant or Oscar Wilde. Woman will _never_ understand the\ndepth of the spirit of purpose in man, his deeper spirit. And man\nwill never understand the sacredness of feeling to woman. Each will\nplay at the other's game, but they will remain apart.\n\nThe whole mode, the whole everything is really different in man and\nwoman. Therefore we should keep boys and girls apart, that they are\npure and virgin in themselves. On mixing with one another, in becoming\nfamiliar, in being \"pals,\" they lose their own male and female\nintegrity. And they lose the treasure of the future, the vital sex\npolarity, the dynamic magic of life. For the magic and the dynamism\nrests on _otherness_.\n\nFor actual sex is a vital polarity. And a polarity which rouses into\naction, as we know, at puberty.\n\nAnd how? As we know, a child lives from the great field of dynamic\nconsciousness established between the four poles of the dynamic\npsyche, two great poles of sympathy, two great poles of will. The\nsolar plexus and the lumbar ganglion, great nerve-centers below the\ndiaphragm, act as the dynamic origin of all consciousness in man, and\nare immediately polarized by the other two nerve-centers, the cardiac\nplexus and the thoracic ganglion above the diaphragm. At these four\npoles the whole flow, both within the individual and from without\nhim, of dynamic consciousness and dynamic creative relationship is\ncentered. These four first poles constitute the first field of dynamic\nconsciousness for the first twelve or fourteen years of the life of\nevery child.\n\nAnd then a change takes place. It takes place slowly, gradually and\ninevitably, utterly beyond our provision or control. The living soul\nis unfolding itself in another great metamorphosis.\n\nWhat happens, in the biological psyche, is that deeper centers of\nconsciousness and function come awake. Deep in the lower body the\ngreat sympathetic center, the hypogastric plexus has been acting all\nthe time in a kind of dream-automatism, balanced by its corresponding\nvoluntary center, the sacral ganglion. At the age of twelve these two\ncenters begin slowly to rumble awake, with a deep reverberant force\nthat changes the whole constitution of the life of the individual.\n\nAnd as these two centers, the sympathetic center of the deeper\nabdomen, and the voluntary center of the loins, gradually sparkle into\nwakeful, _conscious_ activity, their corresponding poles are roused in\nthe upper body. In the region of the throat and neck, the so-called\ncervical plexuses and the cervical ganglia dawn into activity.\n\nWe have now another field of dawning dynamic consciousness, that will\nextend far beyond the first. And now various things happen to us.\nFirst of all actual sex establishes its strange and troublesome\npresence within us. This is the massive wakening of the lower body.\nAnd then, in the upper body, the breasts of a woman begin to develop,\nher throat changes its form. And in the man, the voice breaks, the\nbeard begins to grow round the lips and on to the throat. There are\nthe obvious physiological changes resulting from the gradual bursting\ninto free activity of the hypogastric plexus and the sacral ganglion,\nin the lower body, and of the cervical plexuses and ganglia of the\nneck, in the upper body.\n\nWhy the growth of hair should start at the lower and upper sympathetic\nregions we cannot say. Perhaps for protection. Perhaps to preserve\nthese powerful yet supersensitive nodes from the inclemency of changes\nin temperature, which might cause a derangement. Perhaps for the sake\nof protective warning, as hair warns when it is touched. Perhaps for a\nscreen against various dynamic vibrations, and as a receiver of other\nsuited dynamic vibrations. It may be that even the hair of the head\nacts as a sensitive vibration-medium for conveying currents of\nphysical and vitalistic activity to and from the brain. And perhaps\nfrom the centers of intense vital surcharge hair springs as a sort of\nannunciation or declaration, like a crest of life-assertion. Perhaps\nall these things, and perhaps others.\n\nBut with the bursting awake of the four new poles of dynamic\nconsciousness and being, change takes place in everything, the\nfeatures now begin to take individual form, the limbs develop out of\nthe soft round matrix of child-form, the body resolves itself into\ndistinctions. A strange creative change in being has taken place. The\nchild before puberty is quite another thing from the child after\npuberty. Strange indeed is this new birth, this rising from the sea of\nchildhood into a new being. It is a resurrection which we fear.\n\nAnd now, a new world, a new heaven and a new earth. Now new\nrelationships are formed, the old ones retire from their prominence.\nNow mother and father inevitably give way before masters and\nmistresses, brothers and sisters yield to friends. This is the period\nof _Schwaermerei_, of young adoration and of real initial friendships.\nA child before puberty has playmates. After puberty he has friends and\nenemies.\n\nA whole new field of passional relationship. And the old bonds\nrelaxing, the old love retreating. The father and mother bonds now\nrelax, though they never break. The family love wanes, though it never\ndies.\n\nIt is the hour of the stranger. Let the stranger now enter the soul.\n\nAnd it is the first hour of true individuality, the first hour of\ngenuine, responsible solitariness. A child knows the abyss of\nforlornness. But an adolescent alone knows the strange pain of growing\ninto his own isolation of individuality.\n\nAll this change is an agony and a bliss. It is a cataclysm and a new\nworld. It is our most serious hour, perhaps. And yet we cannot be\nresponsible for it.\n\nNow sex comes into active being. Until puberty, sex is submerged,\nnascent, incipient only. After puberty, it is a tremendous factor.\n\nWhat is sex, really? We can never say, satisfactorily. But we know so\nmuch: we know that it is a dynamic polarity between human beings, and\na circuit of force _always_ flowing. The psychoanalyst is right so\nfar. There can be no vivid relation between two adult individuals\nwhich does not consist in a dynamic polarized flow of vitalistic force\nor magnetism or electricity, call it what you will, between these two\npeople. Yet is this dynamic flow inevitably sexual in nature?\n\nThis is the moot point for psychoanalysis. But let us look at sex, in\nits obvious manifestation. The _sexual_ relation between man and woman\nconsummates in the act of coition. Now what is the act of coition? We\nknow its functional purpose of procreation. But, after all our\nexperience and all our poetry and novels we know that the procreative\npurpose of sex is, to the individual man and woman, just a side-show.\nTo the individual, the act of coition is a great psychic experience, a\nvital experience of tremendous importance. On this vital individual\nexperience the life and very being of the individual largely depends.\n\nBut what is the experience? Untellable. Only, we know something. We\nknow that in the act of coition the _blood_ of the individual man,\nacutely surcharged with intense vital electricity--we know no word, so\nsay \"electricity,\" by analogy--rises to a culmination, in a tremendous\nmagnetic urge towards the magnetic blood of the female. The whole of\nthe living blood in the two individuals forms a field of intense,\npolarized magnetic attraction. So, the two poles must be brought into\ncontact. In the act of coition, the two seas of blood in the two\nindividuals, rocking and surging towards contact, as near as possible,\nclash into a oneness. A great flash of interchange occurs, like an\nelectric spark when two currents meet or like lightning out of the\ndensely surcharged clouds. There is a lightning flash which passes\nthrough the blood of both individuals, there is a thunder of sensation\nwhich rolls in diminishing crashes down the nerves of each--and then\nthe tension passes.\n\nThe two individuals are separate again. But are they as they were\nbefore? Is the air the same after a thunder-storm as before? No. The\nair is as it were new, fresh, tingling with newness. So is the blood\nof man and woman after successful coition. After a false coition, like\nprostitution, there is not newness but a certain disintegration.\n\nBut after coition, the actual chemical constitution of the blood is so\nchanged, that usually sleep intervenes, to allow the time for\nchemical, biological readjustment through the whole system.\n\nSo, the blood is changed and renewed, refreshed, almost recreated,\nlike the atmosphere after thunder. Out of the newness of the living\nblood pass the new strange waves which beat upon the great dynamic\ncenters of the nerves: primarily upon the hypogastric plexus and the\nsacral ganglion. From these centers rise new impulses, new vision, new\nbeing, rising like Aphrodite from the foam of the new tide of blood.\nAnd so individual life goes on.\n\nPerhaps, then, we will allow ourselves to say what, in psychic\nindividual reality, is the act of coition. It is the bringing together\nof the surcharged electric blood of the male with the polarized\nelectric blood of the female, with the result of a tremendous flashing\ninterchange, which alters the constitution of the blood, and the very\nquality of _being_, in both.\n\nAnd this, surely, is sex. But is this the whole of sex? That is the\nquestion.\n\nAfter coition, we say the blood is renewed. We say that from the new,\nfinely sparkling blood new thrills pass into the great affective\ncenters of the lower body, new thrills of feeling, of impulse, of\nenergy.--And what about these new thrills?\n\nNow, a new story. The new thrills are passed on to the great upper\ncenters of the dynamic body. The individual polarity now changes,\nwithin the individual system. The upper centers, cardiac plexus and\ncervical plexuses, thoracic ganglion and cervical ganglia now assume\npositivity. These, the upper polarized centers, have now the positive\nrole to play, the solar and the hypogastric plexuses, the lumbar and\nthe sacral ganglia, these have the submissive, negative role for the\ntime being.\n\nAnd what then? What now, that the upper centers are finely active in\npositivity? Now it is a different story. Now there is new vision in\nthe eyes, new hearing in the ears, new voice in the throat and speech\non the lips. Now the new song rises, the brain tingles to new thought,\nthe heart craves for new activity.\n\nThe heart craves for new activity. For new _collective_ activity. That\nis, for a new polarized connection with other beings, other men.\n\nIs this new craving for polarized communion with others, this craving\nfor a new unison, is it sexual, like the original craving for the\nwoman? Not at all. The whole polarity is different. Now, the positive\npoles are the poles of the breast and shoulders and throat, the poles\nof activity and full consciousness. Men, being themselves made new\nafter the act of coition, wish to make the world new. A new,\npassionate polarity springs up between men who are bent on the same\nactivity, the polarity between man and woman sinks to passivity. It is\nnow daytime, and time to forget sex, time to be busy making a new\nworld.\n\nIs this new polarity, this new circuit of passion between comrades and\nco-workers, is this also sexual? It is a vivid circuit of polarized\npassion. Is it hence sex?\n\nIt is not. Because what are the poles of positive connection?--the\nupper, busy poles. What is the dynamic contact?--a unison in spirit,\nin understanding, and a pure commingling in one great _work_. A\nmingling of the individual passion into one great _purpose_. Now this\nis also a grand consummation for men, this mingling of many with one\ngreat impassioned purpose. But is this sex? Knowing what sex is, can\nwe call this other also sex? We cannot.\n\nThis meeting of many in one great passionate purpose is not sex, and\nshould never be confused with sex. It is a great motion in the\nopposite direction. And I am sure that the ultimate, greatest desire\nin men is this desire for great _purposive_ activity. When man loses\nhis deep sense of purposive, creative activity, he feels lost, and is\nlost. When he makes the sexual consummation the supreme consummation,\neven in his _secret_ soul, he falls into the beginnings of despair.\nWhen he makes woman, or the woman and child the great center of life\nand of life-significance, he falls into the beginnings of despair.\n\nMan must bravely stand by his own soul, his own responsibility as the\ncreative vanguard of life. And he must also have the courage to go\nhome to his woman and become a perfect answer to her deep sexual call.\nBut he must never confuse his two issues. Primarily and supremely man\nis _always_ the pioneer of life, adventuring onward into the unknown,\nalone with his own temerarious, dauntless soul. Woman for him exists\nonly in the twilight, by the camp fire, when day has departed. Evening\nand the night are hers.\n\nThe psychoanalysts, driving us back to the sexual consummation always,\ndo us infinite damage.\n\nWe have to break away, back to the great unison of manhood in some\npassionate _purpose_. Now this is not like sex. Sex is always\nindividual. A man has his own sex: nobody else's. And sexually he goes\nas a single individual; he can mingle only singly. So that to make sex\na general affair is just a perversion and a lie. You can't get people\nand talk to them about their sex, as if it were a common interest.\n\nWe have got to get back to the great purpose of manhood, a passionate\nunison in actively making a world. This is a real commingling of many.\nAnd in such a commingling we forfeit the individual. In the\ncommingling of sex we are alone with _one_ partner. It is an\nindividual affair, there is no superior or inferior. But in the\ncommingling of a passionate purpose, each individual sacredly abandons\nhis individual. In the living faith of his soul, he surrenders his\nindividuality to the great urge which is upon him. He may have to\nsurrender his name, his fame, his fortune, his life, everything. But\nonce a man, in the integrity of his own individual soul, _believes_,\nhe surrenders his own individuality to his belief, and becomes one of\na united body. He knows what he does. He makes the surrender\nhonorably, in agreement with his own soul's deepest desire. But he\nsurrenders, and remains responsible for the purity of his surrender.\n\nBut what if he believes that his sexual consummation is his supreme\nconsummation? Then he serves the great purpose to which he pledges\nhimself only as long as it pleases him. After which he turns it down,\nand goes back to sex. With sex as the one accepted prime motive, the\nworld drifts into despair and anarchy.\n\nOf all countries, America has most to fear from anarchy, even from one\nsingle moment's lapse into anarchy. The old nations are _organically_\nfixed into classes, but America not. You can shake Europe to atoms.\nAnd yet peasants fall back to peasantry, artisans to industrial labor,\nupper classes to their control--inevitably. But can you say the same\nof America?\n\nAmerica must not lapse for one single moment into anarchy. It would be\nthe end of her. She must drift no nearer to anarchy. She is near\nenough.\n\nWell, then, Americans must make a choice. It is a choice between\nbelief in man's creative, spontaneous soul, and man's automatic power\nof production and reproduction. It is a choice between serving _man_,\nor woman. It is a choice between yielding the soul to a leader,\nleaders, or yielding only to the woman, wife, mistress, or mother.\n\nThe great collective passion of belief which brings men together,\ncomrades and co-workers, passionately obeying their soul-chosen leader\nor leaders, this is not a sex passion. Not in any sense. Sex holds\nany _two_ people together, but it tends to disintegrate society,\nunless it is subordinated to the great dominating male passion of\ncollective _purpose_.\n\nBut when the sex passion submits to the great purposive passion, then\nyou have fulness. And no great purposive passion can endure long\nunless it is established upon the fulfillment in the vast majority of\nindividuals of the true sexual passion. No great motive or ideal or\nsocial principle can endure for any length of time unless based upon\nthe sexual fulfillment of the vast majority of individuals concerned.\n\nIt cuts both ways. Assert sex as the predominant fulfillment, and you\nget the collapse of living purpose in man. You get anarchy. Assert\n_purposiveness_ as the one supreme and pure activity of life, and you\ndrift into barren sterility, like our business life of to-day, and our\npolitical life. You become sterile, you make anarchy inevitable. And\nso there you are. You have got to base your great purposive activity\nupon the intense sexual fulfillment of all your individuals. That was\nhow Egypt endured. But you have got to keep your sexual fulfillment\neven then subordinate, just subordinate to the great passion of\npurpose: subordinate by a hair's breadth only: but still, by that\nhair's breadth, subordinate.\n\nPerhaps we can see now a little better--to go back to the child--where\nFreud is wrong in attributing a sexual motive to all human activity.\nIt is obvious there is no real sexual motive in a child, for example.\nThe great sexual centers are not even awake. True, even in a child of\nthree, rudimentary sex throws strange shadows on the wall, in its\napproach from the distance. But these are only an uneasy intrusion\nfrom the as-yet-uncreated, unready biological centers. The great\nsexual centers of the hypogastric plexus, and the immensely powerful\nsacral ganglion are slowly prepared, developed in a kind of prenatal\ngestation during childhood before puberty. But even an unborn child\nkicks in the womb. So do the great sex-centers give occasional blind\nkicks in a child. It is part of the phenomenon of childhood. But we\nmust be most careful not to charge these rather unpleasant apparitions\nor phenomena against the individual boy or girl. We must be _very_\ncareful not to drag the matter into mental consciousness. Shoo it\naway. Reprimand it with a pah! and a faugh! and a bit of contempt. But\ndo not get into any heat or any fear. Do not startle a passional\nattention. Drive the whole thing away like the shadow it is, and be\n_very_ careful not to drive it into the consciousness. Be very careful\nto plant no seed of burning shame or horror. Throw over it merely the\ncold water of contemptuous indifference, dismissal.\n\nAfter puberty, a child may as well be told the simple and necessary\nfacts of sex. As things stand, the parent may as well do it. But\nbriefly, coldly, and with as cold a dismissal as possible.--\"Look\nhere, you're not a child any more; you know it, don't you? You're\ngoing to be a man. And you know what that means. It means you're going\nto marry a woman later on, and get children. You know it, and I know\nit. But in the meantime, leave yourself alone. I know you'll have a\nlot of bother with yourself, and your feelings. I know what is\nhappening to you. And I know you get excited about it. But you\nneedn't. Other men have all gone through it. So don't you go creeping\noff by yourself and doing things on the sly. It won't do you any\ngood.--I know what you'll do, because we've all been through it. I\nknow the thing will keep coming on you at night. But remember that I\nknow. Remember. And remember that I want you to leave yourself alone.\nI know what it is, I tell you. I've been through it all myself. You've\ngot to go through these years, before you find a woman you want to\nmarry, and whom you can marry. I went through them myself, and got\nmyself worked up a good deal more than was good for me.--Try to\ncontain yourself. Always try to contain yourself, and be a man. That's\nthe only thing. Always try and be manly, and quiet in yourself.\nRemember I know what it is. I've been the same, in the same state that\nyou are in. And probably I've behaved more foolishly and perniciously\nthan ever you will. So come to me if anything _really_ bothers you.\nAnd don't feel sly and secret. I do know just what you've got and what\nyou haven't. I've been as bad and perhaps worse than you. And the only\nthing I want of you is to be manly. Try and be manly, and quiet in\nyourself.\"\n\nThat is about as much as a father can say to a boy, at puberty. You\nhave to be _very_ careful what you do: especially if you are a parent.\nTo translate sex into mental ideas is vile, to make a scientific fact\nof it is death.\n\nAs a matter of fact there should be some sort of initiation into true\nadult consciousness. Boys should be taken away from their mothers and\nsisters as much as possible at adolescence. They should be given into\nsome real manly charge. And there should be some actual initiation\ninto sex life. Perhaps like the savages, who make the boy die again,\nsymbolically, and pull him forth through some narrow aperture, to be\nborn again, and make him suffer and endure terrible hardships, to make\na great dynamic effect on the consciousness, a terrible dynamic sense\nof change in the very being. In short, a long, violent initiation,\nfrom which the lad emerges emaciated, but cut off forever from\nchildhood, entered into the serious, responsible pale of manhood. And\nwith his whole consciousness convulsed by a great change, as his\ndynamic psyche actually is convulsed.--And something in the same way,\nto initiate girls into womanhood.\n\nThere should be the intense dynamic reaction: the physical suffering\nand the physical realization sinking deep into the soul, changing the\nsoul for ever. Sex should come upon us as a terrible thing of\nsuffering and privilege and mystery: a mysterious metamorphosis come\nupon us, and a new terrible power given us, and a new responsibility.\nTelling?--What's the good of telling?--The mystery, the terror, and\nthe tremendous power of sex should never be explained away. The mass\nof mankind should _never_ be acquainted with the scientific biological\nfacts of sex: _never_. The mystery must remain in its dark secrecy,\nand its dark, powerful dynamism. The reality of sex lies in the great\ndynamic convulsions in the soul. And as such it should be realized, a\ngreat creative-convulsive seizure upon the soul.--To make it a matter\nof test-tube mixtures, chemical demonstrations and trashy lock-and-key\nsymbols is just blasting. Even more sickening is the line: \"You see,\ndear, one day you'll love a man as I love Daddy, more than anything\nelse in the _whole_ world. And then, dear, I hope you'll marry him.\nBecause if you do you'll be happy, and I want you to be happy, my\nlove. And so I hope you'll marry the man you really love (kisses the\nchild).--And then, darling, there will come a lot of things you know\nnothing about now. You'll want to have a dear little baby, won't you,\ndarling? Your own dear little baby. And your husband's as well.\nBecause it'll be his, too. You know that, don't you, dear? It will be\nborn from both of you. And you don't know how, do you? Well, it will\ncome from right inside you, dear, out of your own inside. You came\nout of mother's inside, etc., etc.\"\n\nBut I suppose there's really nothing else to be done, given the world\nand society as we've got them now. The mother is doing her best.\n\nBut it is all wrong. It is wrong to make sex appear as if it were part\nof the dear-darling-love smarm: the spiritual love. It is even worse\nto take the scientific test-tube line. It all kills the great\neffective dynamism of life, and substitutes the mere ash of mental\nideas and tricks.\n\nThe scientific fact of sex is no more sex than a skeleton is a man.\nYet you'd think twice before you stock a skeleton in front of a lad\nand said, \"You see, my boy, this is what you are when you come to know\nyourself.\"--And the ideal, lovey-dovey \"explanation\" of sex as\nsomething wonderful and extra lovey-dovey, a bill-and-coo process of\nobtaining a sweet little baby--or else \"God made us so that we must do\nthis, to bring another dear little baby to life\"--well, it just makes\none sick. It is disastrous to the deep sexual life. But perhaps that\nis what we want.\n\nWhen humanity comes to its senses it will realize what a fearful Sodom\napple our understanding is. What terrible mouths and stomachs full of\nbitter ash we've all got. And then we shall take away \"knowledge\" and\n\"understanding,\" and lock them up along with the rest of poisons, to\nbe administered in small doses only by competent people.\n\nWe have almost poisoned the mass of humanity to death with\n_understanding_. The period of actual death and race-extermination is\nnot far off. We could have produced the same barrenness and frenzy of\nnothingness in people, perhaps, by dinning it into them that every man\nis just a charnel-house skeleton of unclean bones. Our \"understanding,\"\nour science and idealism have produced in people the same strange frenzy\nof self-repulsion as if they saw their own skulls each time they looked\nin the mirror. A man is a thing of scientific cause-and-effect and\nbiological process, draped in an ideal, is he? No wonder he sees the\nskeleton grinning through the flesh.\n\nOur leaders have not loved men: they have loved ideas, and have been\nwilling to sacrifice passionate men on the altars of the\nblood-drinking, ever-ash-thirsty ideal. Has President Wilson, or Karl\nMarx, or Bernard Shaw ever felt one hot blood-pulse of love for the\nworking man, the half-conscious, deluded working man? Never. Each of\nthese leaders has wanted to abstract him away from his own blood and\nbeing, into some foul Methuselah or abstraction of a man.\n\nAnd me? There is no danger of the working man ever reading my books,\nso I shan't hurt him that way. But oh, I would like to save him alive,\nin his living, spontaneous, original being. I can't help it. It is my\npassionate instinct.\n\nI would like him to give me back the responsibility for general\naffairs, a responsibility which he can't acquit, and which saps his\nlife. I would like him to give me back the responsibility for the\nfuture. I would like him to give me back the responsibility for\nthought, for direction. I wish we could take hope and belief together.\nI would undertake my share of the responsibility, if he gave me his\nbelief.\n\nI would like him to give me back books and newspapers and theories.\nAnd I would like to give him back, in return, his old insouciance, and\nrich, original spontaneity and fullness of life.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nPARENT LOVE\n\n\nIn the serious hour of puberty, the individual passes into his second\nphase of accomplishment. But there cannot be a perfect transition\nunless all the activity is in full play in all the first four poles of\nthe psyche. Childhood is a chrysalis from which each must extricate\nhimself. And the struggling youth or maid cannot emerge unless by the\nenergy of all powers; he can never emerge if the whole mass of the\nworld and the tradition of love hold him back.\n\nNow we come to the greater peril of our particular form of idealism.\nIt is the idealism of love and of the spirit: the idealism of\nyearning, outgoing love, of pure sympathetic communion and\n\"understanding.\" And this idealism recognizes as the highest earthly\nlove, the love of mother and child.\n\nAnd what does this mean? It means, for every delicately brought up\nchild, indeed for all the children who matter, a steady and\npersistent pressure upon the upper sympathetic centers, and a steady\nand persistent starving of the lower centers, particularly the great\nvoluntary center of the lower body. The center of sensual, manly\nindependence, of exultation in the sturdy, defiant self, willfulness\nand masterfulness and pride, this center is steadily suppressed. The\nwarm, swift, sensual self is steadily and persistently denied, damped,\nweakened, throughout all the period of childhood. And by sensual we do\nnot mean greedy or ugly, we mean the deeper, more impulsive reckless\nnature. Life must be always refined and superior. Love and happiness\nmust be the watchword. The willful, critical element of the spiritual\nmode is never absent, the silent, if forbearing disapproval and\ndistaste is always ready. Vile bullying forbearance.\n\nWith what result? The center of upper sympathy is abnormally, inflamedly\nexcited; and the centers of will are so deranged that they operate in\njerks and spasms. The true polarity of the sympathetic-voluntary system\nwithin the child is so disturbed as to be almost deranged. Then we have\nan exaggerated sensitiveness alternating with a sort of helpless fury:\nand we have delicate frail children with nerves or with strange whims.\nAnd we have the strange cold obstinacy of the spiritual will, cold as\nhell, fixed in a child.\n\nThen one parent, usually the mother, is the object of blind devotion,\nwhilst the other parent, usually the father, is an object of\nresistance. The child is taught, however, that both parents should be\nloved, and only loved: and that love, gentleness, pity, charity, and\nall \"higher\" emotions, these alone are genuine feelings, all the rest\nare false, to be rejected.\n\nWith what result? The upper centers are developed to a degree of\nunnatural acuteness and reaction--or again they fall numbed and\nbarren. And then between parents and children a painfully false\nrelation grows up: a relation as of two adults, either of two pure\nlovers, or of two love-appearing people who are really trying to bully\none another. Instead of leaving the child with its own limited but\ndeep and incomprehensible feelings, the parent, hopelessly involved in\nthe sympathetic mode of selfless love, and spiritual love-will,\nstimulates the child into a consciousness which does not belong to it,\non the one plane, and robs it of its own spontaneous consciousness and\nfreedom on the other plane.\n\nAnd this is the fatality. Long before puberty, by an exaggeration and\nan intensity of spiritual love from the parents, the second centers\nof sympathy are artificially aroused into response. And there is an\nirreparable disaster. Instead of seeing as a child should see, through\na glass, darkly, the child now opens premature eyes of sympathetic\ncognition. Instead of knowing in part, as it should know, it begins,\nat a fearfully small age, to know in full. The cervical plexuses and\nthe cervical ganglia, which should only begin to awake after\nadolescence, these centers of the higher dynamic sympathy and\ncognition, are both artificially stimulated, by the adult personal\nlove-emotion and love-will into response, in a quite young child,\nsometimes even in an infant. This is a holy obscenity.\n\nOur particular mode of idealism causes us to suppress as far as\npossible the sensual centers, to make them negative. The whole of the\nactivity is concentrated, as far as possible, in the upper or\nspiritual centers, the centers of the breast and throat, which we will\ncall the centers of dynamic cognition, in contrast to the centers of\nsensual comprehension below the diaphragm.\n\nAnd then a child arrives at puberty, with its upper nature already\nroused into precocious action. The child nowadays is almost invariably\nprecocious in \"understanding.\" In the north, spiritually precocious,\nso that by the time it arrives at adolescence it already has\nexperienced the extended sympathetic reactions which should have lain\nutterly dark. And it has experienced these extended reactions with\nwhom? With the parent or parents.\n\nWhich is man devouring his own offspring. For to the parents belongs,\nonce and for all, the dynamic reaction on the first plane of\nconsciousness only, the reaction and relationship at the first four\npoles of dynamic consciousness. When the second, the farther plane of\nconsciousness rouses into action, the relationship is with strangers.\nAll human instinct and all ethnology will prove this to us. What\nsex-instinct there is in a child is always _adverse_ to the parents.\n\nBut also, the parents are all too quick. They all proceed to swallow\ntheir children before the children can get out of their clutches. And\neven if parents do send away their children at the age of puberty--to\nschool or elsewhere--it is not much good. The mischief has been done\nbefore. For the first twelve years the parents and the whole community\nforcibly insist on the child's living from the upper centers only, and\nparticularly the upper sympathetic centers, without the balance of the\nwarm, deep sensual self. Parents and community alike insist on\nrousing an adult sympathetic response, and a mental answer in the\nchild-schools, Sunday-schools, books, home-influence--all works in\nthis one pernicious way. But it is the home, the parents, that work\nmost effectively and intensely. There is the most intimate mesh of\nlove, love-bullying, and \"understanding\" in which a child is\nentangled.\n\nSo that a child arrives at the age of puberty already stripped of its\nchildhood's darkness, bound, and delivered over. Instead of waking now\nto a whole new field of consciousness, a whole vast and wonderful new\ndynamic impulse towards new connections, it finds itself fatally\nbound. Puberty accomplishes itself. The hour of sex strikes. But there\nis your child, bound, helpless. You have already aroused in it the\ndynamic response to your own insatiable love-will. You have already\nestablished between your child and yourself the dynamic relation in\nthe further plane of consciousness. You have got your child as sure as\nif you had woven its flesh again with your own. You have done what it\nis vicious for any parent to do: you have established between your\nchild and yourself the bond of adult love: the love of man for man,\nwoman for woman, or man for woman. All your tenderness, your\ncherishing will not excuse you. It only deepens your guilt. You have\nestablished between your child and yourself the bond of further\nsympathy. I do not speak of sex. I speak of pure sympathy, sacred\nlove. The parents establish between themselves and their child the\nbond of the higher love, the further spiritual love, the sympathy of\nthe adult soul.\n\nAnd this is fatal. It is a sort of incest. It is a dynamic _spiritual_\nincest, more dangerous than sensual incest, because it is more\nintangible and less instinctively repugnant. But let psychoanalysis\nfall into what discredit it may, it has done us this great service of\nproving to us that the intense upper sympathy, indeed the dynamic\nrelation either of love-will or love-sympathy, between parent and\nchild, upon the upper plane, inevitably involves us in a conclusion of\nincest.\n\nFor although it is our aim to establish a purely spiritual dynamic\nrelation on the upper plane only, yet, because of the inevitable\npolarity of the human psychic system, we shall arouse at the same time\na dynamic sensual activity on the lower plane, the deeper sensual\nplane. We may be as pure as angels, and yet, being human, this will\nand must inevitably happen. When Mrs. Ruskin said that John Ruskin\nshould have married his mother she spoke the truth. He _was_ married\nto his mother. For in spite of all our intention, all our creed, all\nour purity, all our desire and all our will, once we arouse the\ndynamic relation in the upper, higher plane of love, we inevitably\nevoke a dynamic consciousness on the lower, deeper plane of sensual\nlove. And then what?\n\nOf course, parents can reply that their love, however intense, is\npure, and has absolutely no sensual element. Maybe--and maybe not. But\nadmit that it is so. It does not help. The intense excitement of the\nupper centers of sympathy willy-nilly arouses the lower centers. It\narouses them to activity, even if it denies them any expression or any\npolarized connection. Our psyche is so framed that activity aroused on\none plane provokes activity on the corresponding plane, automatically.\nSo the intense _pure_ love-relation between parent and child\ninevitably arouses the lower centers in the child, the centers of sex.\nNow the deeper sensual centers, once aroused, should find response\nfrom the sensual body of some other, some friend or lover. The\nresponse is impossible between parent and child. Myself, I believe\nthat biologically there is radical sex-aversion between parent and\nchild, at the deeper sensual centers. The sensual circuit _cannot_\nadjust itself spontaneously between the two.\n\nSo what have you? Child and parent intensely linked in adult\nlove-sympathy and love-will, on the upper plane, and in the child, the\ndeeper sensual centers aroused, but finding no correspondent, no\nobjective, no polarized connection with another person. There they\nare, the powerful centers of sex, acting spasmodically, without\nbalance. They must be polarized somehow. So they are polarized to the\nactive upper centers within the child, and you get an introvert.\n\nThis is how introversion begins. The lower sexual centers are aroused.\nThey find no sympathy, no connection, no response from outside, no\nexpression. They are dynamically polarized by the upper centers within\nthe individual. That is, the whole of the sexual or deeper sensual\nflow goes on upwards in the individual, to his own upper, from his own\nlower centers. The upper centers hold the lower in positive polarity.\nThe flow goes on upwards. There _must_ be some reaction. And so you\nget, first and foremost, self-consciousness, an intense consciousness\nin the upper self of the lower self. This is the first disaster. Then\nyou get the upper body exploiting the lower body. You get the hands\nexploiting the sensual body, in feeling, fingering, and in\nmasturbation. You get a pornographic longing with regard to the self.\nYou get the obscene post cards which most youths possess. You get the\nabsolute lust for dirty stories, which so many men have. And you get\nvarious mild sex perversions, such as masturbation, and so on.\n\nWhat does all this mean? It means that the activity of the lower\npsyche and lower body is polarized by the upper body. Eyes and ears\nwant to gather sexual activity and knowledge. The mind becomes full of\nsex: and always, in an introvert, of his _own_ sex. If we examine the\napparent extroverts, like the flaunting Italian, we shall see the same\nthing. It is his own sex which obsesses him.\n\nAnd to-day what have we but this? Almost inevitably we find in a child\nnow an intense, precocious, secret sexual preoccupation. The upper\nself is rabidly engaged in exploiting the lower self. A child and its\nown roused, inflamed sex, its own shame and masturbation, its own\ncruel, secret sexual excitement and sex _curiosity_, this is the\ngreatest tragedy of our day. The child does not so much want to _act_\nas to _know_. The thought of actual sex connection is usually\nrepulsive. There is an aversion from the normal coition act. But the\ncraving to feel, to see, to taste, to _know_, mentally in the head,\nthis is insatiable. Anything, so that the sensation and experience\nshall come through the _upper_ channels. This is the secret of our\nintroversion and our perversion to-day. Anything rather than\nspontaneous direct action from the sensual self. Anything rather than\nthe merely normal passion. Introduce any trick, any idea, any mental\nelement you can into sex, but make it an affair of the upper\nconsciousness, the mind and eyes and mouth and fingers. This is our\nvice, our dirt, our disease.\n\nAnd the adult, and the ideal are to blame. But the tragedy of our\nchildren, in their inflamed, solitary sexual excitement, distresses us\nbeyond any blame.\n\nIt is time to drop the word love, and more than time to drop the ideal\nof love. Every frenzied individual is told to find fulfillment in\nlove. So he tries. Whereas, there is no fulfillment in love. Half of\nour fulfillment comes _through_ love, through strong, sensual love.\nBut the central fulfillment, for a man, is that he possess his own\nsoul in strength within him, deep and alone. The deep, rich aloneness,\nreached and perfected through love. And the passing beyond any further\n_quest_ of love.\n\nThis central fullness of self-possession is our goal, if goal there be\nany. But there are two great _ways_ of fulfillment. The first, the way\nof fulfillment through complete love, complete, passionate, deep love.\nAnd the second, the greater, the fulfillment through the\naccomplishment of religious purpose, the soul's earnest purpose. We\nwork the love way falsely, from the upper self, and work it to death.\nThe second way, of active unison in strong purpose, and in faith, this\nwe only sneer at.\n\nBut to return to the child and the parent. The coming to the\nfulfillment of single aloneness, through love, is made impossible for\nus by the ideal, the monomania of more love. At the very _age\ndangereuse_, when a woman should be accomplishing her own fulfillment\ninto maturity and rich quiescence, she turns rabidly to seek a new\nlover. At the very crucial time when she should be coming to a state\nof pure equilibrium and rest with her husband, she turns rabidly\nagainst rest or peace or equilibrium or husband in any shape or form,\nand demands more love, more love, a new sort of lover, one who will\n\"understand\" her. And as often as not she turns to her son.\n\nIt is true, a woman reaches her goal of fulfillment through feeling.\nBut through being \"understood\" she reaches nowhere, unless the lover\nunderstands what a vice it is for a woman to get herself and her sex\ninto her head. A woman reaches her fulfillment through love, deep\nsensual love, and exquisite sensitive communion. But once she reaches\nthe point of fulfillment, she should not break off to ask for more\nexcitements. She should take the beauty of maturity and peace and\nquiet faithfulness upon her.\n\nThis she won't do, however, unless the man, her husband, goes on\nbeyond her. When a man approaches the beginning of maturity and the\nfulfillment of his individual self, about the age of thirty-five, then\nis not his time to come to rest. On the contrary. Deeply fulfilled\nthrough marriage, and at one with his own soul, he must now undertake\nthe responsibility for the next step into the future. He must now give\nhimself perfectly to some further purpose, some passionate purposive\nactivity. Till a man makes the great resolution of aloneness and\nsingleness of being, till he takes upon himself the silence and\ncentral appeasedness of maturity; and _then, after this_, assumes a\nsacred responsibility for the next purposive step into the future,\nthere is no rest. The great resolution of aloneness and appeasedness,\nand the further deep assumption of responsibility in purpose--this is\nnecessary to every parent, every father, every husband, at a certain\npoint. If the resolution is never made, the responsibility never\nembraced, then the love-craving will run on into frenzy, and lay waste\nto the family. In the woman particularly the love-craving will run on\nto frenzy and disaster.\n\nSeeking, seeking the fulfillment in the deep passional self; diseased\nwith self-consciousness and sex in the head, foiled by the very loving\nweakness of the husband who has not the courage to withdraw into his\nown stillness and singleness, and put the wife under the spell of his\nfulfilled decision; the unhappy woman beats about for her insatiable\nsatisfaction, seeking whom she may devour. And usually, she turns to\nher child. Here she provokes what she wants. Here, in her own son who\nbelongs to her, she seems to find the last perfect response for which\nshe is craving. He is a medium to her, she provokes from him her own\nanswer. So she throws herself into a last great love for her son, a\nfinal and fatal devotion, that which would have been the richness and\nstrength of her husband and is poison to her boy. The husband,\nirresolute, never accepting his own higher responsibility, bows and\naccepts. And the fatal round of introversion and \"complex\" starts once\nmore. If man will never accept his own ultimate being, his final\naloneness, and his last responsibility for life, then he must expect\nwoman to dash from disaster to disaster, rootless and uncontrolled.\n\n\"_On revient toujours a son premier amour._\" It sounds like a cynicism\nto-day. As if we really meant: \"_On ne revient jamais a son premier\namour._\" But as a matter of fact, a man never leaves his first love,\nonce the love is established. He may leave his first attempt at love.\nOnce a man establishes a full dynamic communication at the deeper and\nthe higher centers, with a woman, this can never be broken. But sex in\nthe head breaks down, and half circuits break down. Once the full\ncircuit is established, however, this can never break down.\n\nNowadays, alas, we start off self-conscious, with sex in the head. We\nfind a woman who is the same. We marry because we are \"pals.\" The sex\nis a rather nasty fiasco. We keep up a pretense of \"pals\"--and nice\nlove. Sex spins wilder in the head than ever. There is either a\nfamily of children whom the dissatisfied parents can devote themselves\nto, thereby perverting the miserable little creatures: or else there\nis a divorce. And at the great dynamic centers nothing has happened at\nall. Blank nothing. There has been no vital interchange at all in the\nwhole of this beautiful marriage affair.\n\nEstablish between yourself and another individual a dynamic connection\nat only _two_ of the four further poles, and you will have the devil\nof a job to break the connection. Especially if it be the first\nconnection you have made. Especially if the other individual be the\nfirst in the field.\n\nThis is the case of the parents. Parents are first in the field of the\nchild's further consciousness. They are criminal trespassers in that\nfield. But that makes no matter. They are first in the field. They\nestablish a dynamic connection between the two upper centers, the\ncenters of the throat, the centers of the higher dynamic sympathy and\ncognition. They establish this circuit. And break it if you can. Very\noften not even death can break it.\n\nAnd as we see, the establishment of the upper love-and-cognition\ncircuit inevitably provokes the lower sex-sensual centers into action,\neven though there be no correspondence on the sensual plane between\nthe two individuals concerned. Then see what happens. If you want to\nsee the real desirable wife-spirit, look at a mother with her boy of\neighteen. How she serves him, how she stimulates him, how her true\nfemale self is his, is wife-submissive to him as never, never it could\nbe to a husband. This is the quiescent, flowering love of a mature\nwoman. It is the very flower of a woman's love: sexually asking\nnothing, asking nothing of the beloved, save that he shall be himself,\nand that for his living he shall accept the gift of her love. This is\nthe perfect flower of married love, which a husband should put in his\ncap as he goes forward into the future in his supreme activity. For\nthe husband, it is a great pledge, and a blossom. For the son also it\nseems wonderful. The woman now feels for the first time as a true wife\nmight feel. And her feeling is towards her son.\n\nOr, instead of mother and son, read father and daughter.\n\nAnd then what? The son gets on swimmingly for a time, till he is faced\nwith the actual fact of sex necessity. He gleefully inherits his\nadolescence and the world at large, without an obstacle in his way,\nmother-supported, mother-loved. Everything comes to him in glamour,\nhe feels he sees wondrous much, understands a whole heaven,\nmother-stimulated. Think of the power which a mature woman thus\ninfuses into her boy. He flares up like a flame in oxygen. No wonder\nthey say geniuses mostly have great mothers. They mostly have sad\nfates.\n\nAnd then?--and then, with this glamorous youth? What is he actually to\ndo with his sensual, sexual self? Bury it? Or make an effort with a\nstranger? For he is taught, even by his mother, that his manhood must\nnot forego sex. Yet he is linked up in ideal love already, the best he\nwill ever know.\n\nNo woman will give to a stranger that which she gives to her son, her\nfather or her brother: that beautiful and glamorous submission which\nis truly the wife-submission. To a stranger, a husband, a woman\ninsists on being queen, goddess, mistress, the positive, the adored,\nthe first and foremost and the one and only. This she will not ask\nfrom her near blood-kin. Of her blood-kin, there is always one she\nwill love devotedly.\n\nAnd so, the charming young girl who adores her father, or one of her\nbrothers, is sought in marriage by the attractive young man who loves\nhis mother devotedly. And a pretty business the marriage is. We can't\nthink of it. Of course they may be good pals. It's the only thing\nleft.\n\nAnd there we are. The game is spoilt before it is begun. Within the\ncircle of the family, owing to our creed of insatiable love, intense\nadult sympathies are provoked in quite young children. In Italy, the\nItalian stimulates adult sex-consciousness and sex-sympathy in his\nchild, almost deliberately. But with us, it is usually spiritual\nsympathy and spiritual criticism. The adult experiences are provoked,\nthe adult devotional sympathies are linked up, prematurely, as far as\nthe child is concerned. We have the heart-wringing spectacle of\nintense parent-child love, a love intense as the love of man and\nwoman, but not sexual; or else the great brother-sister devotion. And\nthus, the great love-experience which should lie in the future is\nforestalled. Within the family, the love-bond forms quickly, without\nthe shocks and ruptures inevitable between strangers. And so, it is\neasiest, intensest--and seems the best. It seems the highest. You will\nnot easily get a man to believe that his carnal love for the woman he\nhas made his wife is as high a love as that he felt for his mother or\nsister.\n\nThe cream is licked off from life before the boy or the girl is\ntwenty. Afterwards--repetition, disillusion, and barrenness.\n\nAnd the cause?--always the same. That parents will not make the great\nresolution to come to rest within themselves, to possess their own\nsouls in quiet and fullness. The man has not the courage to withdraw\nat last into his own soul's stillness and aloneness, and _then_,\npassionately and faithfully, to strive for the living future. The\nwoman has not the courage to give up her hopeless insistence on love\nand her endless demand for love, demand of being loved. She has not\nthe greatness of soul to relinquish her own self-assertion, and\nbelieve in the man who believes in himself and in his own soul's\nefforts:--if there _are_ any such men nowadays, which is very\ndoubtful.\n\nAlas, alas, the future! Your son, who has tasted the real beauty of\nwife-response in his mother or sister. Your daughter, who adores her\nbrother, and who marries some woman's son. They are so charming to\nlook at, such a lovely couple. And at first it is all such a good\ngame, such good sport. Then each one begins to fret for the beauty of\nthe lost, non-sexual, partial relationship. The sexual part of\nmarriage has proved so--so empty. While that other loveliest\nthing--the poignant touch of devotion felt for mother or father or\nbrother--why, this is missing altogether. The best is missing. The\nrest isn't worth much. Ah well, such is life. Settle down to it, and\nbring up the children carefully to more of the same.--The\nfuture!--You've had all your good days by the time you're twenty.\n\nAnd, I ask you, what good will psychoanalysis do you in this state of\naffairs? Introduce an extra sex-motive to excite you for a bit and\nmake you feel how thrillingly immoral things really are. And then--it\nall goes flat again. Father complex, mother complex, incest dreams:\npah, when we've had the little excitement out of them we shall forget\nthem as we have forgotten so many other catch-words. And we shall be\njust where we were before: unless we are worse, with _more_ sex in the\nhead, and more introversion, only more brazen.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nTHE VICIOUS CIRCLE\n\n\nHere is a very vicious circle. And how to get out of it? In the first\nplace, we have to break the love-ideal, once and for all. Love, as we\nsee, is not the only dynamic. Taking love in its greatest sense, and\nmaking it embrace every form of sympathy, every flow from the great\nsympathetic centers of the human body, still it is not the whole of\nthe dynamic flow, it is only the one-half. There is always the other\nvoluntary flow to reckon with, the intense motion of independence and\nsingleness of self, the pride of isolation, and the profound\nfulfillment through power.\n\nThe very first thing of all to be recognized is the danger of\nidealism. It is the one besetting sin of the human race. It means the\nfall into automatism, mechanism, and nullity.\n\nWe know that life issues spontaneously at the great nodes of the\npsyche, the great nerve-centers. At first these are four only: then,\nafter puberty, they become eight: later there may still be an\nextension of the dynamic consciousness, a further polarization. But\neight is enough at the moment.\n\nFirst at four, and then at eight dynamic centers of the human body,\nthe human nervous system, life starts spontaneously into being. The\nsoul bursts day by day into fresh impulses, fresh desire, fresh\npurpose, at these our polar centers. And from these dynamic generative\ncenters issue the vital currents which put us into connection with our\nobject. We have really no will and no choice, in the first place. It\nis our soul which acts within us, day by day unfolding us according to\nour own nature.\n\nFrom the objective circuits and from the subjective circuits which\nestablish and fulfill themselves at the first four centers of\nconsciousness we derive our first being, our child-being, and also our\nfirst mind, our child-mind. By the objective circuits we mean those\ncircuits which are established between the self and some external\nobject: mother, father, sister, cat, dog, bird, or even tree or plant,\nor even further still, some particular place, some particular\ninanimate object, a knife or a chair or a cap or a doll or a wooden\nhorse. For we must insist that every object which really enters\neffectively into our lives does so by direct connection. If I love my\nmother, it is because there is established between me and her a\ndirect, powerful circuit of vital magnetism, call it what you will,\nbut a direct flow of dynamic _vital_ interchange and intercourse. I\nwill not call this vital flow a _force_, because it depends on the\nincomprehensible initiative and control of the individual soul or\nself. Force is that which is directed only from some universal will or\nlaw. Life is _always_ individual, and therefore never controlled by\none law, one God. And therefore, since the living really sway the\nuniverse, even if unknowingly; therefore there is no one universal\nlaw, even for the physical forces. Because we insist that even the sun\ndepends, for its heartbeat, its respiration, its pivotal motion, on\nthe beating hearts of men and beast, on the dynamic of the\nsoul-impulse in individual creatures. It is from the aggregate\nheartbeat of living individuals, of we know not how many or what sort\nof worlds, that the sun rests stable.\n\nWhich may be dismissed as metaphysics, although it is quite as valid\nor even as demonstrable as Newton's Law of Gravitation, which law\nstill remains a law, even if not quite so absolute as heretofore.\n\nBut this is a digression. The argument is, that between an individual\nand any external object with which he has an affective connection,\nthere exists a definite vital flow, as definite and concrete as the\nelectric current whose polarized circuit sets our tram-cars running\nand our lamps shining, or our Marconi wires vibrating. Whether this\nobject be human, or animal, or plant, or quite inanimate, there is\nstill a circuit. My dog, my canary has a polarized connection with me.\nNay, the very cells in the ash-tree I loved as a child had a dynamic\nvibratory connection with the nuclei in my own centers of primary\nconsciousness. And further still, the boots I have worn are so\nsaturated with my own magnetism, my own vital activity, that if anyone\nelse wear them I feel it is a trespass, almost as if another man used\nmy hand to knock away a fly. I doubt very much if a blood-hound, when\nit takes a scent, _smells_, in our sense of the word. It receives at\nthe infinitely sensitive telegraphic center of the dog's nostrils the\nvital vibration which remains in the inanimate object from the\nindividual with whom the object was associated. I should like to know\nif a dog would trace a pair of quite new shoes which had merely been\ndragged at the end of a string. That is, does he follow the smell of\nthe leather itself, or the vibration track of the individual whose\nvitality is communicated to the leather?\n\nSo, there is a definite vibratory rapport between a man and his\nsurroundings, once he definitely gets into contact with these\nsurroundings. Any particular locality, any house which has been lived\nin has a vibration, a transferred vitality of its own. This is either\nsympathetic or antipathetic to the succeeding individual in varying\ndegree. But certain it is that the inhabitants who live at the foot of\nEtna will always have a certain pitch of life-vibration, antagonistic\nto the pitch of vibration even of a Palermitan, in some measure. And\nold houses are saturated with human presence, at last to a degree of\nindecency, unbearable. And tradition, in its most elemental sense,\nmeans the continuing of the same peculiar pitch of vital vibration.\n\nSuch is the objective dynamic flow between the psychic poles of the\nindividual and the substance of the external object, animate or\ninanimate. The subjective dynamic flow is established between the four\nprimary poles within the individual. Every dynamic connection begins\nfrom one or the other of the sympathetic centers: is, or should be,\nalmost immediately polarized from the corresponding voluntary center.\nThen a complete flow is set up, in one plane. But this always rouses\nthe activity on the other, corresponding plane, more or less intense.\nThere is a whole field of consciousness established, with positive\npolarity of the first plane, negative polarity of the second. Which\nbeing so, a whole fourfold field of dynamic consciousness now working\nwithin the individual, direct cognition takes place. The mind begins\nto know, and to strive to know.\n\nThe business of the mind is first and foremost the pure joy of knowing\nand comprehending the pure joy of consciousness. The second business\nis to act as medium, as interpreter, as agent between the individual\nand his object. The mind should _not_ act as a director or controller\nof the spontaneous centers. These the soul alone must control: the\nsoul being that forever unknowable reality which causes us to rise\ninto being. There is continual conflict between the soul, which is for\never sending forth incalculable impulses, and the psyche, which is\nconservative, and wishes to persist in its old motions, and the mind,\nwhich wishes to have \"freedom,\" that is spasmodic, idea-driven\ncontrol. Mind, and conservative psyche, and the incalculable soul,\nthese three are a trinity of powers in every human being. But there is\nsomething even beyond these. It is the individual in his pure\nsingleness, in his totality of consciousness, in his oneness of being:\nthe Holy Ghost which is with us after our Pentecost, and which we may\nnot deny. When I say to myself: \"I am wrong,\" knowing with sudden\ninsight that I _am_ wrong, then this is the whole self speaking, the\nHoly Ghost. It is no piece of mental inference. It is not just the\nsoul sending forth a flash. It is my whole being speaking in one\nvoice, soul and mind and psyche transfigured into oneness. This voice\nof my being I may _never_ deny. When at last, in all my storms, my\nwhole self speaks, then there is a pause. The soul collects itself\ninto pure silence and isolation--perhaps after much pain. The mind\nsuspends its knowledge, and waits. The psyche becomes strangely still.\nAnd then, after the pause, there is fresh beginning, a new life\nadjustment. Conscience is the being's consciousness, when the\nindividual is conscious _in toto_, when he knows in full. It is\nsomething which includes and which far surpasses mental consciousness.\nEvery man must live as far as he can by his own soul's conscience.\nBut not according to any ideal. To submit the conscience to a creed,\nor an idea, or a tradition, or even an impulse, is our ruin.\n\nTo make the mind the absolute ruler is as good as making a Cook's\ntourist-interpreter a king and a god, because he can speak several\nlanguages, and make an Arab understand that an Englishman wants fish\nfor supper. And to make an ideal a ruling principle is about as stupid\nas if a bunch of travelers should never cease giving each other and\ntheir dragoman sixpence, because the dragoman's main idea of virtue is\nthe virtue of sixpence-giving. In the same way, we _know_ we cannot\nlive purely by impulse. Neither can we live solely by tradition. We\nmust live by all three, ideal, impulse, and tradition, each in its\nhour. But the real guide is the pure conscience, the voice of the self\nin its wholeness, the Holy Ghost.\n\nWe have fallen now into the mistake of idealism. Man always falls into\none of the three mistakes. In China, it is tradition. And in the South\nSeas, it seems to have been impulse. Ours is idealism. Each of the\nthree modes is a true life-mode. But any one, alone or dominant,\nbrings us to destruction. We must depend on the wholeness of our\nbeing, ultimately only on that, which is our Holy Ghost within us.\nWhereas, in an ideal of love and benevolence, we have tried to\nautomatize ourselves into little love-engines always stoked with the\nsorrows or beauties of other people, so that we can get up steam of\ncharity or righteous wrath. A great trick is to pour on the fire the\noil of our indignation at somebody else's wickedness, and then, when\nwe've got up steam like hell, back the engine and run bish! smash!\nagainst the belly of the offender. Because he said he didn't want to\nlove any more, we hate him for evermore, and try to run over him,\nevery bit of him, with our love-tanks. And all the time we yell at\nhim: \"Will you deny love, you villain? Will you?\" And by the time he\nfaintly squeaks, \"I want to be loved! I want to be loved!\" we have got\nso used to running over him with our love-tanks that we don't feel in\na hurry to leave off.\n\n    \"_Sois mon frere, ou je te tue._\"\n    \"_Sois mon frere, ou je me tue._\"\n\nThere are the two parrot-threats of love, on which our loving\ncenturies have run as on a pair of railway-lines. Excuse me if I want\nto get out of the train. Excuse me if I can't get up any love-steam\nany more. My boilers are burst.\n\nWe have made a mistake, laying down love like the permanent way of a\ngreat emotional transport system. There we are, however, running on\nwheels on the lines of our love. And of course we have only two\ndirections, forwards and backwards. \"Onward, Christian soldiers,\ntowards the great terminus where bottles of sterilized milk for the\nbabies are delivered at the bedroom windows by noiseless aeroplanes\neach morn, where the science of dentistry is so perfect that teeth are\nplanted in a man's mouth without his knowing it, where twilight sleep\nis so delicious that every woman longs for her next confinement, and\nwhere nobody ever has to do anything except turn a handle now and then\nin a spirit of universal love--\" That is the forward direction of the\nEnglish-speaking race. The Germans unwisely backed their engine. \"We\nhave a city of light. But instead of lying ahead it lies direct behind\nus. So reverse engines. Reverse engines, and away, away to our city,\nwhere the sterilized milk is delivered by noiseless aeroplanes, _at\nthe very precise minute when our great doctors of the Fatherland have\ndiagnosed that it is good for you_: where the teeth are not only so\npainlessly planted that they grow like living rock, but where their\ncomposition is such that the friction of eating stimulates the cells\nof the jaw-bone and develops the _superman strength of will which\nmakes us gods_: and where not only is twilight sleep serene, but into\nthe sleeper are inculcated the most useful and instructive dreams,\ncalculated to perfect the character of the young citizen at this\ncrucial period, and to enlighten permanently the mind of the happy\nmother, with regard to her new duties towards her child and towards\nour great Fatherland--\"\n\nHere you see we are, on the railway, with New Jerusalem ahead, and New\nJerusalem away behind us. But of course it was very wrong of the\nGermans to reverse their engines, and cause one long collision all\nalong the line. Why should we go _their_ way to the New Jerusalem,\nwhen of course they might so easily have kept on going our way. And\nnow there's wreckage all along the line! But clear the way is our\nmotto--or make the Germans clear it. Because get on we will.\n\nMeanwhile we sit rather in the cold, waiting for the train to get a\nstart. People keep on signaling with green lights and red lights. And\nit's all very bewildering.\n\nAs for me, I'm off. I'm damned if I'll be shunted along any more. And\nI'm thrice damned if I'll go another yard towards that sterilized New\nJerusalem, either forwards or backwards. New Jerusalem may rot, if it\nwaits for me. I'm not going.\n\nSo good-by! There we leave humanity, encamped in an appalling mess\nbeside the railway-smash of love, sitting down, however, and having\nnot a bad time, some of 'em, feeding themselves fat on the plunder:\nothers, further down the line, with mouths green from eating grass.\nBut all grossly, stupidly, automatically gabbling about getting the\nlove-service running again, the trains booked for the New Jerusalem\nwell on the way once more. And occasionally a good engine gives a\nscreech of love, and something seems to be about to happen. And\nsometimes there is enough steam to set the indignation-whistles\nwhistling. But never any more will there be enough love-steam to get\nthe system properly running. It is done.\n\nGood-by, then! You may have laid your line from one end to the other\nof the infinite. But still there's plenty of hinterland. I'll go.\nGood-by. Ach, it will be so nice to be alone: not to hear you, not to\nsee you, not to smell you, humanity. I wish you no ill, but wisdom.\nGood-by!\n\nTo be alone with one's own soul. Not to be alone without my own soul,\nmind you. But to be alone with one's own soul! This, and the joy of\nit, is the real goal of love. My own soul, and myself. Not my ego, my\nconceit of myself. But my very soul. To be at one in my own self. Not\nto be questing any more. Not to be yearning, seeking, hoping,\ndesiring, aspiring. But to pause, and be alone.\n\nAnd to have one's own \"gentle spouse\" by one's side, of course, to dig\none in the ribs occasionally. Because really, being alone in peace\nmeans being two people together. Two people who can be silent\ntogether, and not conscious of one another outwardly. Me in my\nsilence, she in hers, and the balance, the equilibrium, the pure\ncircuit between us. With occasional lapses of course: digs in the ribs\nif one gets too vague or self-sufficient.\n\nThey say it is better to travel than to arrive. It's not been my\nexperience, at least. The journey of love has been rather a\nlacerating, if well-worth-it, journey. But to come at last to a nice\nplace under the trees, with your \"amiable spouse\" who has at last\nlearned to hold her tongue and not to bother about rights and wrongs:\nher own particularly. And then to pitch a camp, and cook your rabbit,\nand eat him: and to possess your own soul in silence, and to feel all\nthe clamor lapse. That is the best I know.\n\nI think it is terrible to be young. The ecstasies and agonies of love,\nthe agonies and ecstasies of fear and doubt and drop-by-drop\nfulfillment, realization. The awful process of human relationships,\nlove and marital relationships especially. Because we all make a very,\nvery bad start to-day, with our idea of love in our head, and our sex\nin our head as well. All the fight till one is bled of one's\nself-consciousness and sex-in-the-head. All the bitterness of the\nconflict with this devil of an amiable spouse, who has got herself so\nstuck in her own head. It is terrible to be young.--But one fights\none's way through it, till one is cleaned: the self-consciousness and\nsex-idea burned out of one, cauterized out bit by bit, and the self\nwhole again, and at last free.\n\nThe best thing I have known is the stillness of accomplished marriage,\nwhen one possesses one's own soul in silence, side by side with the\namiable spouse, and has left off craving and raving and being only\nhalf one's self. But I must say, I know a great deal more about the\ncraving and raving and sore ribs, than about the accomplishment. And I\nmust confess that I feel this self-same \"accomplishment\" of the\nfulfilled being is only a preparation for new responsibilities ahead,\nnew unison in effort and conflict, the effort to make, with other men,\na little new way into the future, and to break through the hedge of\nthe many.\n\nBut--to your tents, my Israel. And to that precious baby you've left\nslumbering there. What I meant to say was, in each phase of life you\nhave a great circuit of human relationship to establish and fulfill.\nIn childhood, it is the circuit of family love, established at the\nfirst four consciousness centers, and gradually fulfilling itself,\ncompleting itself. At adolescence, the first circuit of family love\nshould be completed, dynamically finished. And then, it falls into\nquiescence. After puberty, family love should fall quiescent in a\nchild. The love never breaks. It continues static and basic, the basis\nof the emotional psyche, the foundation of the self. It is like the\nmoon when the moon at last subsides into her eternal orbit, round the\nearth. She travels in her orbit so inevitably that she forgets, and\nbecomes unaware. She only knits her brows over the earth's greater\naberrations in space.\n\nThe circuit of parental love, once fulfilled, is not done away with,\nbut only established into silence. The child is then free to establish\nthe new connections, in which he surpasses his parents. And let us\nrepeat, parents should never try to establish adult relations, of\nsympathy or interest or anything else, between themselves and their\nchildren. The attempt to do so only deranges the deep primary circuit\nwhich is the dynamic basis of our living. It is a clambering upwards\nonly by means of a broken foundation. Parents should remain parents,\nchildren children, for ever, and the great gulf preserved between the\ntwo. Honor thy father and thy mother should always be a leading\ncommandment. But this can only take place when father and mother keep\ntheir true parental distances, dignity, reserve, and limitation. As\nsoon as father and mother try to become the _friends_ and _companions_\nof their children, they break the root of life, they rupture the\ndeepest dynamic circuit of living, they derange the whole flow of life\nfor themselves and their children.\n\nFor let us reiterate and reiterate: you cannot mingle and confuse the\nvarious modes of dynamic love. If you try, you produce horrors. You\ncannot plant the heart below the diaphragm or put an ocular eye in the\nnavel. No more can you transfer parent love into friend love or adult\nlove. Parent love is established at the great primary centers, where\nman is father and child, playmate and brother, but where he _cannot_\nbe comrade or lover. Comrade and lover, this is the dynamic activity\nof the further centers, the second four centers. And these second four\ncenters must be active in the parent, their intense circuit\nestablished even if not fulfilled, long before the child is born. The\ncircuit of friendship, of personal companionship, of sexual love must\nneeds be established before the child is begotten, or at least before\nit attains to adolescence. These circuits of the extended field are\nalready fully established in the parent before the centers of\ncorrespondence in the child are even formed. When therefore the four\ngreat centers of the extended consciousness arouses in a child, at\nadolescence, they must needs seek a strange complement, a foreign\nconjunction.\n\nNot only is this the case, but the actual dynamic impulse of the new\nlife which rouses at puberty is _alien_ to the original dynamic flow.\nThe new wave-length by no means corresponds. The new vibration by no\nmeans harmonizes. Force the two together, and you cause a terrible\nfrictional excitement and jarring. It is this instinctive recognition\nof the different dynamic vibrations from different centers, in\ndifferent modes, and in different directions of positive and negative,\nwhich lies at the base of savage taboo. After puberty, members of one\nfamily should be taboo to one another. There should be the most\ndefinite limits to the degree of contact. And mothers-in-law should be\ntaboo to their daughters' husbands, and fathers-in-law to their sons'\nwives. We must again begin to learn the great laws of the first\ndynamic life-circuits. These laws we now make havoc of, and\nconsequently we make havoc of our own soul, psyche, mind and health.\n\nThis book is written primarily concerning the child's consciousness.\nIt is not intended to enter the field of the post-puberty\nconsciousness. But yet, the dynamic relation of the child is\nestablished so directly with the physical and psychical soul of the\nparent, that to get any inkling of dynamic child-consciousness we must\nunderstand something of parent-consciousness.\n\nWe assert that the parent-child love-mode excludes the possibility of\nthe man-and-woman, or friend-and-friend love mode. We assert that the\npolarity of the first four poles is inconsistent with the polarity of\nthe second four poles. Nay, between the two great fields is a certain\ndynamic opposition, resistance, even antipathy. So that in the natural\ncourse of life there is no possibility of confusing parent love and\nadult love.\n\nBut we are mental creatures, and with the explosive and mechanistic\naid of ideas we can pervert the whole psyche. Only, however, in a\ndestructive degree, not in a positive or constructive.\n\nLet us return then. In the ordinary course of development, by the time\nthat the child is born and grown to puberty the whole dynamic soul of\nthe mother is engaged: first, with the children, and second, on the\nfurther, higher plane, with the husband, and with her own friends. So\nthat when the child reaches adolescence it must inevitably cast abroad\nfor connection.\n\nBut now let us remember the actual state of affairs to-day, when the\npoles are reversed between the sexes. The woman is now the responsible\nparty, the law-giver, the culture-bearer. She is the conscious guide\nand director of the man. She bears his soul between her two hands. And\nher sex is just a function or an instrument of power. This being so,\nthe man is really the servant and the fount of emotion, love and\notherwise.\n\nWhich is all very well, while the fun lasts. But like all perverted\nprocesses, it is exhaustive, and like the fun wears out. Leaving an\nexhaustion, and an irritation. Each looks on the other as a perverter\nof life. Almost invariably a married woman, as she passes the age of\nthirty, conceives a dislike, or a contempt of her husband, or a pity\nwhich is too near contempt. Particularly if he be a good husband, a\ntrue modern. And he, for his part, though just as jarred inside\nhimself, resents only the fact that he is not loved as he ought to be.\n\nThen starts a new game. The woman, even the most virtuous, looks\nabroad for new sympathy. She will have a new man-friend, if nothing\nmore. But as a rule she has got something more. She has got her\nchildren.\n\nA relation between mother and child to-day is practically _never_\nparental. It is personal--which means, it is critical and deliberate,\nand adult in provocation. The mother, in her new role of idealist and\nlife-manager never, practically for one single moment, gives her child\nthe unthinking response from the deep dynamic centers. No, she gives\nit what is good for it. She shoves milk in its mouth as the clock\nstrikes, she shoves it to sleep when the milk is swallowed, and she\nshoves it ideally through baths and massage, promenades and practice,\ntill the little organism develops like a mushroom to stand on its own\nfeet. Then she continues her ideal shoving of it through all the\nstages of an ideal up-bringing, she loves it as a chemist loves his\ntest-tubes in which he analyzes his salts. The poor little object is\nhis mother's ideal. But of her head she dictates his providential\ndays, and by the force of her deliberate mentally-directed love-will\nshe pushes him up into boyhood. The poor little devil never knows one\nmoment when he is not encompassed by the beautiful, benevolent,\nidealistic, Botticelli-pure, and finally obscene love-will of the\nmother. Never, never one mouthful does he drink of the milk of human\nkindness: always the sterilized milk of human benevolence. There is no\nmother's milk to-day, save in tigers' udders, and in the udders of\nsea-whales. Our children drink a decoction of ideal love, at the\nbreast.\n\nNever for one moment, poor baby, the deep warm stream of love from the\nmother's bowels to his bowels. Never for one moment the dark proud\nrecoil into rest, the soul's separation into deep, rich independence.\nNever this lovely rich forgetfulness, as a cat trots off and utterly\nforgets her kittens, utterly, richly forgets them, till suddenly,\nclick, the dynamic circuit reverses itself in her, and she remembers,\nand rages round in a frenzy, shouting for her young.\n\nOur miserable infants never know this joy and richness and pang of real\nmaternal warmth. Our wonderful mothers never let us out of their minds\nfor one single moment. Not for a second do they allow us to escape from\ntheir ideal benevolence. Not one single breath does a baby draw, free\nfrom the imposition of the pure, unselfish, Botticelli-holy, detestable\n_love-will_ of the mother. Always the _will_, the will, the love-will,\nthe ideal will, directed from the ideal mind. Always this stone, this\nscorpion of maternal nourishment. Always this infernal self-conscious\nMadonna starving our living guts and bullying us to death with her love.\n\nWe have made the idea supplant both impulse and tradition. We have no\nspark of wholeness. And we live by an evil love-will. Alas, the great\nspontaneous mode is abrogated. There is no lovely great flux of vital\nsympathy, no rich rejoicing of pride into isolation and independence.\nThere is no reverence for great traditions of parenthood. No, there is\nsubstitute for everything--life-substitute--just as we have\nbutter-substitute, and meat-substitute, and sugar-substitute, and\nleather-substitute, and silk-substitute, so we have life-substitute.\nWe have beastly benevolence, and foul good-will, and stinking charity,\nand poisonous ideals.\n\nThe poor modern brat, shoved horribly into life by an effort of will,\nand shoved up towards manhood by every appliance that can be applied\nto it, especially the appliance of the maternal will, it is really too\npathetic to contemplate. The only thing that prevents us wringing our\nhands is the remembrance that the little devil will grow up and beget\nother similar little devils of his own, to invent more aeroplanes and\nhospitals and germ-killers and food-substitutes and poison gases. The\nproblem of the future is a question of the strongest poison-gas. Which\nis certainly a very sure way out of our vicious circle.\n\nThere is no way out of a vicious circle, of course, except breaking\nthe circle. And since the mother-child relationship is to-day the\nviciousest of circles, what are we to do? Just wait for the results of\nthe poison-gas competition presumably.\n\nOh, ideal humanity, how detestable and despicable you are! And how you\ndeserve your own poison-gases! How you deserve to perish in your own\nstink.\n\nIt is no use contemplating the development of the modern child, born\nout of the mental-conscious love-will, born to be another unit of\nself-conscious love-will: an ideal-born beastly little entity with a\ndevil's own will of its own, benevolent, of course, and a Satan's own\nseraphic self-consciousness, like a beastly Botticelli brat.\n\nOnce we really consider this modern process of life and the love-will,\nwe could throw the pen away, and spit, and say three cheers for the\ninventors of poison-gas. Is there not an American who is supposed to\nhave invented a breath of heaven whereby, drop one pop-cornful in\nHampstead, one in Brixton, one in East Ham, and one in Islington, and\nLondon is a Pompeii in five minutes! Or was the American only\nbragging? Because anyhow, whom has he experimented on? I read it in\nthe newspaper, though. London a Pompeii in five minutes. Makes the\ngods look silly!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nLITANY OF EXHORTATIONS\n\n\nI thought I'd better turn over a new leaf, and start a new chapter.\nThe intention of the last chapter was to find a way out of the vicious\ncircle. And it ended in poison-gas.\n\nYes, dear reader, so it did. But you've not silenced me yet, for all\nthat.\n\nWe're in a nasty mess. We're in a vicious circle. And we're making a\ncareful study of poison-gases. The secret of Greek fire was lost long\nago, when the world left off being wonderful and ideal. Now it is\nwonderful and ideal again, much wonderfuller and _much_ more ideal. So\nwe ought to do something rare in the way of poison-gas. London a\nPompeii in five minutes! How to outdo Vesuvius!--title of a new book\nby American authors.\n\nThere is only one single other thing to do. And it's more difficult\nthan poison-gas. It is to leave off loving. It is to leave off\nbenevolenting and having a good will. It is to cease utterly. Just\nleave off. Oh, parents, see that your children get their dinners and\nclean sheets, but don't love them. Don't love them one single grain,\nand don't let anybody else love them. Give them their dinners and\nleave them alone. You've already loved them to perdition. Now leave\nthem alone, to find their own way out.\n\nWives, don't love your husbands any more: even if they cry for it, the\ngreat babies! Sing: \"I've had enough of that old sauce.\" And leave off\nloving them or caring for them one single bit. Don't even hate them or\ndislike them. Don't have any stew with them at all. Just boil the eggs\nand fill the salt-cellars and be quite nice, and in your own soul, be\nalone and be still. Be alone, and be still, preserving all the human\ndecencies, and abandoning the indecency of desires and benevolencies\nand devotions, those beastly poison-gas apples of the Sodom vine of\nthe love-will.\n\nWives, don't love your husbands nor your children nor anybody. Sit\nstill, and say Hush! And while you shake the duster out of the\ndrawing-room window, say to yourself--\"In the sweetness of solitude.\"\nAnd when your husband comes in and says he's afraid he's got a cold\nand is going to have double pneumonia, say quietly \"surely not.\" And\nif he wants the ammoniated quinine, give it him if he can't get it for\nhimself. But don't let him drive you out of your solitude, your\nsingleness within yourself. And if your little boy falls down the\nsteps and makes his mouth bleed, nurse and comfort him, but say to\nyourself, even while you tremble with the shock: \"Alone. Alone. Be\nalone, my soul.\" And if the servant smashes three electric-light bulbs\nin three minutes, say to her: \"How very inconsiderate and careless of\nyou!\" But say to yourself: \"Don't hear it, my soul. Don't take fright\nat the pop of a light-bulb.\"\n\nHusbands, don't love your wives any more. If they flirt with men\nyounger or older than yourselves, let your blood not stir. If you can\ngo away, go away. But if you must stay and see her, then say to her,\n\"I would rather you didn't flirt in my presence, Eleanora.\" Then, when\nshe goes red and loosens torrents of indignation, don't answer any\nmore. And when she floods into tears, say quietly in your own self,\n\"My soul is my own\"; and go away, be alone as much as possible. And\nwhen she works herself up, and says she must have love or she will\ndie, then say: \"Not my love, however.\" And to all her threats, her\ntears, her entreaties, her reproaches, her cajolements, her\nwinsomenesses, answer nothing, but say to yourself: \"Shall I be\nimplicated in this display of the love-will? Shall I be blasted by\nthis false lightning?\" And though you tremble in every fiber, and feel\nsick, vomit-sick with the scene, still contain yourself, and say, \"My\nsoul is my own. It shall not be violated.\" And learn, learn, learn the\none and only lesson worth learning at last. Learn to walk in the\nsweetness of the possession of your own soul. And whether your wife\nweeps as she takes off her amber beads at night, or whether your\nneighbor in the train sits in your coat bottoms, or whether your\nsuperior in the office makes supercilious remarks, or your inferior is\nfamiliar and impudent; or whether you read in the newspaper that Lloyd\nGeorge is performing another iniquity, or the Germans plotting another\nplot, say to yourself: \"My soul is my own. My soul is with myself, and\nbeyond implication.\" And wait, quietly, in possession of your own\nsoul, till you meet another man who has made the choice, and kept it.\nThen you will know him by the look on his face: half a dangerous look,\na look of Cain, and half a look of gathered beauty. Then you two will\nmake the nucleus of a new society--Ooray! Bis! Bis!!\n\nBut if you should never meet such a man: and if your wife should\ntorture you every day with her love-will: and even if she should force\nherself into a consumption, like Catherine Linton in \"Wuthering\nHeights,\" owing to her obstinate and determined love-will (which is\nquite another matter than love): and if you see the world inventing\npoison-gas and falling into its poisoned grave: never give in, but be\nalone, and utterly alone with your own soul, in the stillness and\nsweet possession of your own soul. And don't even be angry. And\n_never_ be sad. Why should you? It's not your affair.\n\nBut if your wife should accomplish for herself the sweetness of her\nown soul's possession, then gently, delicately let the new mode assert\nitself, the new mode of relation between you, with something of\nspontaneous paradise in it, the apple of knowledge at last digested.\nBut, my word, what belly-aches meanwhile. That apple is harder to\ndigest than a lead gun-cartridge.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nCOSMOLOGICAL\n\n\nWell, dear reader, Chapter XII was short, and I hope you found it\nsweet.\n\nBut remember, this is an essay on Child Consciousness, not a tract on\nSalvation. It isn't my fault that I am led at moments into\nexhortation.\n\nWell, then, what about it? One fact now seems very clear--at any rate\nto me. We've got to pause. We haven't got to gird our loins with a new\nfrenzy and our larynxes with a new Glory Song. Not a bit of it. Before\nyou dash off to put salt on the tail of a new religion or of a new\nLeader of Men, dear reader, sit down quietly and pull yourself\ntogether. Say to yourself: \"Come now, what is it all about?\" And\nyou'll realize, dear reader, that you're all in a fluster, inwardly.\nThen say to yourself: \"Why am I in such a fluster?\" And you'll see\nyou've no reason at all to be so: except that it's rather exciting to\nbe in a fluster, and it may seem rather stale eggs to be in no fluster\nat all about anything. And yet, dear little reader, once you consider\nit quietly, it's _so_ much nicer _not_ to be in a fluster. It's so\nmuch nicer not to feel one's deeper innards storming like the Bay of\nBiscay. It is so much better to get up and say to the waters of one's\nown troubled spirit: Peace, be still ...! And they will be still ...\nperhaps.\n\nAnd then one realizes that all the wild storms of anxiety and frenzy\nwere only so much breaking of eggs. It isn't our business to live\nanybody's life, or to die anybody's death, except our own. Nor to save\nanybody's soul, nor to put anybody in the right; nor yet in the wrong,\nwhich is more the point to-day. But to be still, and to ignore the\nfalse fine frenzy of the seething world. To turn away, now, each one\ninto the stillness and solitude of his own soul. And there to remain\nin the quiet with the Holy Ghost which is to each man his own true\nsoul.\n\nThis is the way out of the vicious circle. Not to rush round on the\nperiphery, like a rabbit in a ring, trying to break through. But to\nretreat to the very center, and there to be filled with a new strange\nstability, polarized in unfathomable richness with the center of\ncenters. We are so silly, trying to invent devices and machines for\nflying off from the surface of the earth. Instead of realizing that\nfor us the deep satisfaction lies not in escaping, but in getting into\nthe perfect circuit of the earth's terrestrial magnetism. Not in\nbreaking away. What is the good of trying to break away from one's\nown? What is the good of a tree desiring to fly like a bird in the\nsky, when a bird is rooted in the earth as surely as a tree is? Nay,\nthe bird is only the topmost leaf of the tree, fluttering in the high\nair, but attached as close to the tree as any other leaf. Mr.\nEinstein's Theory of Relativity does not supersede the Newtonian Law\nof Gravitation or of Inertia. It only says, \"Beware! The Law of\nInertia is not the simple ideal proposition you would like to make of\nit. It is a vast complexity. Gravitation is not one elemental uncouth\nforce. It is a strange, infinitely complex, subtle aggregate of\nforces.\" And yet, however much it may waggle, a stone does fall to\nearth if you drop it.\n\nWe should like, vulgarly, to rejoice and say that the new Theory of\nRelativity releases us from the old obligation of centrality. It does\nno such thing. It only makes the old centrality much more strange,\nsubtle, complex, and vital. It only robs us of the nice old ideal\nsimplicity. Which ideal simplicity and logicalness has become such a\nfish-bone stuck in our throats.\n\nThe universe is once more in the mental melting-pot. And you can melt\nit down as long as you like, and mutter all the jargon and\nabracadabra, _aldeboronti fosco fornio_ of science that mental\nmonkey-tricks can teach you, you won't get anything in the end but a\nformula and a lie. The atom? Why, the moment you discover the atom it\nwill explode under your nose. The moment you discover the ether it\nwill evaporate. The moment you get down to the real basis of anything,\nit will dissolve into a thousand problematic constituents. And the\nmore problems you solve, the more will spring up with their fingers at\ntheir nose, making a fool of you.\n\nThere is only one clue to the universe. And that is the individual\nsoul within the individual being. That outer universe of suns and\nmoons and atoms is a secondary affair. It is the death-result of\nliving individuals. There is a great polarity in life itself. Life\nitself is dual. And the duality is life and death. And death is not\njust shadow or mystery. It is the negative reality of life. It is what\nwe call Matter and Force, among other things.\n\nLife is individual, always was individual and always will be. Life\nconsists of living individuals, and always did so consist, in the\nbeginning of everything. There never was any universe, any cosmos, of\nwhich the first reality was anything but living, incorporate\nindividuals. I don't say the individuals were exactly like you and me.\nAnd they were never wildly different.\n\nAnd therefore it is time for the idealist and the scientist--they are\none and the same, really--to stop his monkey-jargon about the atom and\nthe origin of life and the mechanical clue to the universe. There\nisn't any such thing. I might as well say: \"Then they took the cart,\nand rubbed it all over with grease. Then they sprayed it with white\nwine, and spun round the right wheel five hundred revolutions to the\nminute and the left wheel, in the opposite direction, seven hundred\nand seventy-seven revolutions to the minute. Then a burning torch was\napplied to each axle. And lo, the footboard of the cart began to\nswell, and suddenly as the cart groaned and writhed, the horse was\nborn, and lay panting between the shafts.\" The whole scientific theory\nof the universe is not worth such a tale: that the cart conceived and\ngave birth to the horse.\n\nI do not believe one-fifth of what science can tell me about the sun.\nI do not believe for one second that the moon is a dead world\nspelched off from our globe. I do not believe that the stars came\nflying off from the sun like drops of water when you spin your wet\nhanky. I have believed it for twenty years, because it seemed so\nideally plausible. Now I don't accept any ideal plausibilities at all.\nI look at the moon and the stars, and I know I don't believe anything\nthat I am told about them. Except that I like their names, Aldebaran\nand Cassiopeia, and so on.\n\nI have tried, and even brought myself to believe in a clue to the\nouter universe. And in the process I have swallowed such a lot of\njargon that I would rather listen now to a negro witch-doctor than to\nScience. There is nothing in the world that is true except empiric\ndiscoveries which work in actual appliances. I know that the sun is\nhot. But I won't be told that the sun is a ball of blazing gas which\nspins round and fizzes. No, thank you.\n\nAt length, for _my_ part, I know that life, and life only is the clue\nto the universe. And that the living individual is the clue to life.\nAnd that it always was so, and always will be so.\n\nWhen the living individual dies, then is the realm of death\nestablished. Then you get Matter and Elements and atoms and forces and\nsun and moon and earth and stars and so forth. In short, the outer\nuniverse, the Cosmos. The Cosmos is nothing but the aggregate of the\ndead bodies and dead energies of bygone individuals. The dead bodies\ndecompose as we know into earth, air, and water, heat and radiant\nenergy and free electricity and innumerable other scientific facts.\nThe dead souls likewise decompose--or else they don't decompose. But\nif they _do_ decompose, then it is not into any elements of Matter and\nphysical energy. They decompose into some psychic reality, and into\nsome potential will. They reenter into the living psyche of living\nindividuals. The living soul partakes of the dead souls, as the living\nbreast partakes of the outer air, and the blood partakes of the sun.\nThe soul, the individuality, never resolves itself through death into\nphysical constituents. The dead soul remains always soul, and always\nretains its individual quality. And it does not disappear, but\nreenters into the soul of the living, of some living individual or\nindividuals. And there it continues its part in life, as a\ndeath-witness and a life-agent. But it does not, ordinarily, have any\nseparate existence there, but is incorporate in the living individual\nsoul. But in some extraordinary cases, the dead soul may really act\nseparately in a living individual.\n\nHow this all is, and what are the laws of the relation between life\nand death, the living and the dead, I don't know. But that this\nrelation exists, and exists in a manner as I describe it, for my own\npart I know. And I am fully aware that once we direct our living\nattention this way, instead of to the absurdity of the atom, then we\nhave a whole _living_ universe of knowledge before us. The universe of\nlife and death, of which we, whose business it is to live and to die,\nknow nothing. Whilst concerning the universe of Force and Matter we\npile up theories and make staggering and disastrous discoveries of\nmachinery and poison-gas, all of which we were much better without.\n\nIt is life we have to live by, not machines and ideals. And life means\nnothing else, even, but the spontaneous living soul which is our\ncentral reality. The spontaneous, living, individual soul, this is the\nclue, and the only clue. All the rest is derived.\n\nHow it is contrived that the individual soul in the living sways the\nvery sun in its centrality, I do not know. But it is so. It is the\npeculiar dynamic polarity of the living soul in every weed or bug or\nbeast, each one separately and individually polarized with the great\nreturning pole of the sun, that maintains the sun alive. For I take it\nthat the sun is the great sympathetic center of our inanimate\nuniverse. I take it that the sun breathes in the effluence of all that\nfades and dies. Across space fly the innumerable vibrations which are\nthe basis of all matter. They fly, breathed out from the dying and the\ndead, from all that which is passing away, even in the living. These\nvibrations, these elements pass away across space, and are breathed\nback again. The sun itself is invisible as the soul. The sun itself is\nthe soul of the inanimate universe, the aggregate clue to the\nsubstantial death, if we may call it so. The sun is the great active\npole of the sympathetic death-activity. To the sun fly the vibrations\nor the molecules in the great sympathy-mode of death, and in the sun\nthey are renewed, they turn again as the great gift back again from\nthe sympathetic death-center towards life, towards the living. But it\nis not even the dead which _really_ sustain the sun. It is the dynamic\nrelation between the solar plexus of individuals and the sun's core, a\nperfect circuit. The sun is materially composed of all the effluence\nof the dead. But the _quick_ of the sun is polarized with the living,\nthe sun's quick is polarized in dynamic relation with the quick of\nlife in all living things, that is, with the solar plexus in mankind.\nA direct dynamic connection between my solar plexus and the sun.\n\nLikewise, as the sun is the great fiery, vivifying pole of the\ninanimate universe, the moon is the other pole, cold and keen and\nvivifying, corresponding in some way to a _voluntary_ pole. We live\nbetween the polarized circuit of sun and moon. And the moon is\npolarized with the lumbar ganglion, primarily, in man. Sun and moon\nare dynamically polarized to our actual tissue, they affect this\ntissue all the time.\n\nThe moon is, as it were, the pole of our particular terrestrial\n_volition_, in the universe. What holds the earth swinging in space is\nfirst, the great dynamic attraction to the sun, and then counterposing\nassertion of independence, singleness, which is polarized in the moon.\nThe moon is the clue to our earth's individual identity, in the wide\nuniverse.\n\nThe moon is an immense magnetic center. It is quite wrong to say she\nis a dead snowy world with craters and so on. I should say she is\ncomposed of some very intense element, like phosphorus or radium, some\nelement or elements which have very powerful chemical and kinetic\nactivity, and magnetic activity, affecting us through space.\n\nIt is not the sun which we see in heaven. It is the rushing thither\nand the rushing thence of the vibrations expelled by death from the\nbody of life, and returned back again to the body of life. Possibly\neven a dead soul makes its journey to the sun and back, before we\nreceive it again in our breast. Just as the breath we breathe out\nflies to the sun and back, before we breathe it in again. And as the\nwater that evaporates rises right to the sun, and returns here. What\nwe see is the great golden rushing thither, from the death exhalation,\ntowards the sun, as a great cloud of bees flying to swarm upon the\ninvisible queen, circling round, and loosing again. This is what we\nsee of the sun. The center is invisible for ever.\n\nAnd of the moon the same. The moon has her back to us for ever. Not\nher face, as we like to think. The moon also pulls the water, as the\nsun does. But not in evaporation. The moon pulls by the magnetic force\nwe call gravitation. Gravitation not being quite such a Newtonian\nsimple apple as we are accustomed to find it, we are perhaps farther\noff from understanding the tides of the ocean than we were before the\nfruit of the tree fell to Sir Isaac's head. It is certainly not simple\nlittle-things tumble-towards-big-things gravitation. In the moon's\npull there is peculiar, quite special force exerted over those\nwater-born substances, phosphorus, salt, and lime. The dynamic energy\nof salt water is something quite different from that of fresh water.\nAnd it is this dynamic energy which the sea gives off, and which\nconnects it with the moon. And the moon is some strange coagulation of\nsubstance such as salt, phosphorus, soda. It certainly isn't a snowy\ncold world, like a world of our own gone cold. Nonsense. It is a globe\nof dynamic substance like radium or phosphorus, coagulated upon a\ncertain vivid pole of energy, which pole of energy is directly\npolarized with our earth, in opposition with the sun.\n\nThe moon is born from the death of individuals. All things, in their\noneing, their unification into the pure, universal oneness, evaporate\nand fly like an imitation breath towards the sun. Even the crumbling\nrocks breathe themselves off in this rocky death, to the sun of\nheaven, during the day.\n\nBut at the same time, during the night they breathe themselves off to\nthe moon. If we come to think of it, light and dark are a question\nboth of the third body, the intervening body, what we will call, by\nstretching a point, the individual. As we all know, apart from the\nexistence of molecules of individual matter, there is neither light\nnor dark. A universe utterly without matter, we don't know whether it\nis light or dark. Even the pure space between the sun and moon, the\nblue space, we don't know whether, in itself, it is light or dark. We\ncan say it is light, we can say it is dark. But light and dark are\nterms which apply only to ourselves, the third, the intermediate, the\nsubstantial, the individual.\n\nIf we come to think of it, light and dark only mean whether we have\nour face or our back towards the sun. If we have our face to the sun,\nthen we establish the circuit of cosmic or universal or material or\ninfinite sympathy. These four adjectives, cosmic, universal, material,\nand infinite are almost interchangeable, and apply, as we see, to that\nrealm of the non-individual existence which we call the realm of the\nsubstantial death. It is the universe which has resulted from the\ndeath of individuals. And to this universe alone belongs the quality\nof infinity: to the universe of death. Living individuals have no\ninfinity save in this relation to the total death-substance and\ndeath-being, the summed-up cosmos.\n\nLight and dark, these great wonders, are relative to us alone. These\nare two vast poles of the cosmic energy and of material existence.\nThese are the vast poles of cosmic sympathy, which we call the sun,\nand the other white pole of cosmic volition, which we call the moon.\nTo the sun belong the great forces of heat and radiant energy, to the\nmoon belong the great forces of magnetism and electricity,\nradium-energy, and so on. The sun is not, in any sense, a material\nbody. It is an invariable intense pole of cosmic energy, and what we\nsee are the particles of our terrestrial decomposition flying thither\nand returning, as fine grains of iron would fly to an intense magnet,\nor better, as the draught in a room veers towards the fire, attracted\ninfallibly, as a moth towards a candle. The moth is drawn to the\ncandle as the draught is drawn to the fire, in the absolute spell of\nthe material polarity of fire. And air escapes again, hot and\ndifferent, from the fire. So is the sun.\n\nFire, we say, is combustion. It is marvelous how science proceeds like\nwitchcraft and alchemy, by means of an abracadabra which has no\nearthly sense. Pray, what is combustion? You can try and answer\nscientifically, till you are black in the face. All you can say is\nthat it is _that which happens_ when matter is raised to a certain\ntemperature--and so forth and so forth. You might as well say, a word\nis that which happens when I open my mouth and squeeze my larynx and\nmake various tricks with my throat muscles. All these explanations are\nso senseless. They describe the apparatus, and think they have\ndescribed the event.\n\nFire may be accompanied by combustion, but combustion is not\nnecessarily accompanied by fire. All A is B, but all B is not A. And\ntherefore fire, no matter how you jiggle, is not identical with\ncombustion. Fire. FIRE. I insist on the absolute word. You may say\nthat fire is a sum of various phenomena. I say it isn't. You might as\nwell tell me a fly is a sum of wings and six legs and two bulging\neyes. It is the fly which has the wings and legs, and not the legs and\nwings which somehow nab the fly into the middle of themselves. A fly\nis not a sum of various things. A fly is a fly, and the items of the\nsum are still fly.\n\nSo with fire. Fire is an absolute unity in itself. It is a dynamic\npolar principle. Establish a certain polarity between the\nmoon-principle and the sun-principle, between the positive and\nnegative, or sympathetic and volitional dynamism in any piece of\nmatter, and you have fire, you have the sun-phenomenon. It is the\nsudden flare into the one mode, the sun mode, the material sympathetic\nmode. Correspondingly, establish an opposite polarity between the\nsun-principle and the water-principle, and you have decomposition into\nwater, or towards watery dissolution.\n\nThere are two sheer dynamic principles in our universe, the\nsun-principle and the moon-principle. And these principles are known\nto us in immediate contact as fire and water. The sun is not fire. But\nthe principle of fire is the sun-principle. That is, fire is the\nsudden swoop towards the sun, of matter which is suddenly\nsun-polarized. Fire is the sudden sun-assertion, the release towards\nthe one pole only. It is the sudden revelation of the cosmic One\nPolarity, One Identity.\n\nBut there is another pole. There is the moon. And there is another\nabsolute and visible principle, the principle of water. The moon is\nnot water. But it is the soul of water, the invisible clue to all the\nwaters.\n\nSo that we begin to realize our visible universe as a vast dual\npolarity between sun and moon. Two vast poles in space, invisible in\nthemselves, but visible owing to the circuit which swoops between\nthem, round them, the circuit of the universe, established at the\ncosmic poles of the sun and moon. This then is the infinite, the\npositive infinite of the positive pole, the sun-pole, negative\ninfinite of the negative pole, the moon-pole. And between the two\ninfinites all existence takes place.\n\nBut wait. Existence is truly a matter of propagation between the two\ninfinites. But it needs a third presence. Sun-principle and\nmoon-principle, embracing through the aeons, could never by themselves\npropagate one molecule of matter. The hailstone needs a grain of dust\nfor its core. So does the universe. Midway between the two cosmic\ninfinites lies the third, which is more than infinite. This is the\nHoly Ghost Life, individual life.\n\nIt is so easy to imagine that between them, the two infinites of the\ncosmos propagated life. But one single moment of pause and silence,\none single moment of gathering the whole soul into knowledge, will\ntell us that it is a falsity. It was the living individual soul which,\ndying, flung into space the two wings of the infinite, the two poles\nof the sun and the moon. The sun and the moon are the two eternal\ndeath-results of the death of individuals. Matter, all matter, is the\nLife-born. And what we know as inert matter, this is only the result\nof death in individuals, it is the dead bodies of individuals\ndecomposed and resmelted between the hammer and anvil, fire and sand\nof the sun and the moon. When time began, the first individual died,\nthe poles of the sun and moon were flung into space, and between the\ntwo, in a strange chaos and battle, the dead body was torn and melted\nand smelted, and rolled beneath the feet of the living. So the world\nwas formed, always under the feet of the living.\n\nAnd so we have a clue to gravitation. We, mankind, are all one family.\nIn our individual bodies burns the positive quick of all things. But\nbeneath our feet, in our own earth, lies the intense center of our\nhuman, individual death, our grave. The earth has one center, to which\nwe are all polarized. The circuit of our life is balanced on the\nliving soul within us, as the positive center, and on the earth's dark\ncenter, the center of our abiding and eternal and substantial death,\nour great negative center, away below. This is the circuit of our\nimmediate individual existence. We stand upon our own grave, with our\ndeath fire, the sun, on our right hand, and our death-damp, the moon,\non our left.\n\nThe earth's center is no accident. It is the great individual pole of\nus who die. It is the center of the first dead body. It is the first\ngerm-cell of death, which germ-cell threw out the great nuclei of the\nsun and the moon. To this center of our earth we, as humans, are\neternally polarized, as are our trees. Inevitably, we fall to earth.\nAnd the clue of us sinks to the earth's center, the clue of our death,\nof our _weight_. And the earth flings us out as wings to the sun and\nmoon: or as the death-germ dividing into two nuclei. So from the earth\nour radiance is flung to the sun, our marsh-fire to the moon, when we\ndie.\n\nWe fall into the earth. But our rising was not from the earth. We rose\nfrom the earthless quick, the unfading life. And earth, sun, and moon\nare born only of our death. But it is only their polarized dynamic\nconnection with us who live which sustains them all in their place\nand maintains them all in their own activities. The inanimate\nuniverse rests absolutely on the life-circuit of living creatures, is\nbuilt upon the arch which spans the duality of living beings.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV\n\nSLEEP AND DREAMS\n\n\nThis is going rather far, for a book--nay, a booklet--on the child\nconsciousness. But it can't be helped. Child-consciousness it is. And\nwe have to roll away the stone of a scientific cosmos from the\ntomb-mouth of that imprisoned consciousness.\n\nNow, dear reader, let us see where we are. First of all, we are\nourselves--which is the refrain of all my chants. We are ourselves. We\nare living individuals. And as living individuals we are the one, pure\nclue to our own cosmos. To which cosmos living individuals _have\nalways_ been the clue, since time began, and _will always_ be the\nclue, while time lasts.\n\nI know it is not so fireworky as the sudden evolving of life,\nsomewhere, somewhen and somehow, out of force and matter with a pop.\nBut that pop never popped, dear reader. The boot was on the other leg.\nAnd I wish I could mix a few more metaphors, like pops and legs and\nboots, just to annoy you.\n\nLife never evolved, or evoluted, out of force and matter, dear reader.\nThere is no such thing as evolution, anyhow. There is only\ndevelopment. Man was man in the very first plasm-speck which was his\nown individual origin, and is still his own individual origin. As for\nthe origin, I don't know much about it. I only know there is but one\norigin, and that is the individual soul. The individual soul\noriginated everything, and has itself no origin. So that time is a\nmatter of living experience, nothing else, and eternity is just a\nmental trick. Of course every living speck, amoeba or newt, has its\nown individual soul.\n\nAnd we sit on our own globe, dear reader, here individually located.\nOur own individual being is our own single reality. But the single\nreality of the individual being is dynamically and directly polarized\nto the earth's center, which is the aggregate negative center of all\nterrestrial existence. In short, the center which in life we thrust\naway from, and towards which we fall, in death. For, our individual\nexistence being positive, we must have a negative pole to thrust away\nfrom. And when our positive individual existence breaks, and we fall\ninto death, our wonderful individual gravitation-center succumbs to\nthe earth's gravitation-center.\n\nSo there we are, individuals, single, life-born, life-living, yet all\nthe while poised and polarized to the aggregate center of our\nsubstantial death, our earth's quick, powerful center-clue.\n\nThere may be other individuals, alive, and having other worlds under\ntheir feet, polarized to their own globe's center. But the very\nsacredness of my own individuality prevents my pronouncing about them,\nlest I, in attributing qualities to them, transgress against the pure\nindividuality which is theirs, beyond me.\n\nIf, however, there be truly other people, with their own world under\ntheir feet, then I think it is fair to say that we all have our\ninfinite identity in the sun. That in the rush and swirl of death we\npass through fiery ways to the same sun. And from the sun, can the\nspores of souls pass to the various worlds? And to the worlds of the\ncosmos seed across space, through the wild beams of the sun? Is there\nseed of Mars in my veins? And is astrology not altogether nonsense?\n\nBut if the sun is the center of our infinite oneing in death with all\nthe other after-death souls of the cosmos: and in that great central\nstation of travel, the sun, we meet and mingle and change trains for\nthe stars: then ought we to assume that the moon is likewise a\nmeeting-place of dead souls? The moon surely is a meeting-place of\ncold, dead, angry souls. But from our own globe only.\n\nThe moon is the center of our terrestrial individuality in the cosmos.\nShe is the declaration of our existence in separateness. Save for the\nintense white recoil of the moon, the earth would stagger towards the\nsun. The moon holds us to our own cosmic individuality, as a world\nindividual in space. She is the fierce center of retraction, of\nfrictional withdrawal into separateness. She it is who sullenly stands\nwith her back to us, and refuses to meet and mingle. She it is who\nburns white with the intense friction of her withdrawal into\nseparation, that cold, proud white fire of furious, almost malignant\napartness, the struggle into fierce, frictional separation. Her white\nfire is the frictional fire of the last strange, intense watery\nmatter, as this matter fights its way out of combination and out of\ncombustion with the sun-stuff. To the pure polarity of the moon fly\nthe essential waters of our universe. Which essential waters, at the\nmoon's clue, are only an intense invisible energy, a polarity of the\nmoon.\n\nThere are only three great energies in the universal life, which is\nalways individual and which yet sways all the physical forces as well\nas the vital energy; and then the two great dynamisms of the sun and\nthe moon. To the dynamism of the sun belong heat, expansion-force, and\nall that range. To the dynamism of the moon the _essential_ watery\nforces: not just gravitation, but electricity, magnetism,\nradium-energy, and so on.\n\nThe moon likewise is the pole of our night activities, as the sun is\nthe pole of our day activities. Remember that the sun and moon are but\ngreat self-abandons which individual life has thrown out, to the right\nhand and to the left. When individual life dies, it flings itself on\nthe right hand to the sun, on the left hand to the moon, in the dual\npolarity, and sinks to earth. When any man dies, his soul divides in\ndeath; as in life, in the first germ, it was united from two germs. It\ndivides into two dark germs, flung asunder: the sun-germ and the\nmoon-germ. Then the material body sinks to earth. And so we have the\ncosmic universe such as we know it.\n\nWhat is the exact relationship between us and the death-realm of the\nafterwards we shall never know. But this relation is none the less\nactive every moment of our lives. There is a pure polarity between\nlife and death, between the living and the dead, between each living\nindividual and the outer cosmos. Between each living individual and\nthe earth's center passes a never-ceasing circuit of magnetism. It is\na circuit which in man travels up the right side, and down the left\nside of the body, to the earth's center. It never ceases. But while we\nare awake it is entirely under the control and spell of the total\nconsciousness, the individual consciousness, the soul, or self. When\nwe sleep, however, then this individual consciousness of the soul is\nsuspended for the time, and we lie completely within the circuit of\nthe earth's magnetism, or gravitation, or both: the circuit of the\nearth's centrality. It is this circuit which is busy in all our tissue\nremoving or arranging the dead body of our past day. For each time we\nlie down to sleep we have within us a body of death which dies with\nthe day that is spent. And this body of death is removed or laid in\nline by the activities of the earth-circuit, the great active\ndeath-circuit, while we sleep.\n\nAs we sleep the current sweeps its own way through us, as the streets\nof a city are swept and flushed at night. It sweeps through our nerves\nand our blood, sweeping away the ash of our day's spent consciousness\ntowards one form or other of excretion. This earth-current actively\nsweeping through us is really the death-activity busy in the service\nof life. It behooves us to know nothing of it. And as it sweeps it\nstimulates in the primary centers of consciousness vibrations which\nflash images upon the mind. Usually, in deep sleep, these images pass\nunrecorded; but as we pass towards the twilight of dawn and\nwakefulness, we begin to retain some impression, some record of the\ndream-images. Usually also the images that are accidentally swept into\nthe mind in sleep are as disconnected and as unmeaning as the pieces\nof paper which the street cleaners sweep into a bin from the city\ngutters at night. We should not think of taking all these papers,\npiecing them together, and making a marvelous book of them, prophetic\nof the future and pregnant with the past. We should not do so,\nalthough every rag of printed paper swept from the gutter would have\nsome connection with the past day's event. But its significance, the\nsignificance of the words printed upon it is so small, that we\nrelegate it into the limbo of the accidental and meaningless. There\nis no vital connection between the many torn bits of paper--only an\naccidental connection. Each bit of paper has reference to some actual\nevent: a bus-ticket, an envelope, a tract, a pastry-shop bag, a\nnewspaper, a hand-bill. But take them all together, bus-ticket, torn\nenvelope, tract, paper-bag, piece of newspaper and hand-bill, and they\nhave no individual sequence, they belong more to the mechanical\narrangements than to the vital consequence of our existence. And the\nsame with most dreams. They are the heterogeneous odds and ends of\nimages swept together accidentally by the besom of the night-current,\nand it is beneath our dignity to attach any real importance to them.\nIt is always beneath our dignity to go degrading the integrity of the\nindividual soul by cringing and scraping among the rag-tag of accident\nand of the inferior, mechanic coincidence and automatic event. Only\nthose events are significant which derive from or apply to the soul in\nits full integrity. To go kow-towing before the facts of change, as\ngamblers and fortune-readers and fatalists do, is merely a perverting\nof the soul's proud integral priority, a rearing up of idiotic idols\nand fetishes.\n\nMost dreams are purely insignificant, and it is the sign of a weak\nand paltry nature to pay any attention to them whatever. Only\noccasionally they matter. And this is only when something _threatens_\nus from the outer mechanical, or accidental _death_-world. When\nanything threatens us from the world of death, then a dream may become\nso vivid that it arouses the actual soul. And when a dream is so\nintense that it arouses the soul--then we must attend to it.\n\nBut we may have the most appalling nightmare because we eat pancakes\nfor supper. Here again, we are threatened with an arrest of the\nmechanical flow of the system. This arrest becomes so serious that it\naffects the great organs of the heart and lungs, and these organs\naffect the primary conscious-centers.\n\nNow we shall see that this is the direct reverse of real living\nconsciousness. In living consciousness the primary affective centers\ncontrol the great organs. But when sleep is on us, the reverse takes place.\nThe great organs, being obstructed in their spontaneous-automatism, at last\nwith violence arouse the active conscious-centers. And these flash images\nto the brain.\n\nThese nightmare images are very frequently purely mechanical: as of\nfalling terribly downwards, or being enclosed in vaults. And such\nimages are pure physical transcripts. The image of falling, of flying,\nof trying to run and not being able to lift the feet, of having to\ncreep through terribly small passages, these are direct transcripts\nfrom the physical phenomena of circulation and digestion. It is the\ndirectly transcribed image of the heart which, impeded in its action\nby the gases of indigestion, is switched out of its established\ncircuit of earth-polarity, and is as if suspended over a void, or\nplunging into a void: step by step, falling downstairs, maybe,\naccording to the strangulation of the heart beats. The same paralytic\ninability to lift the feet when one needs to run, in a dream, comes\ndirectly from the same impeded action of the heart, which is thrown\noff its balance by some material obstruction. Now the heart swings\nleft and right in the pure circuit of the earth's polarity. Hinder\nthis swing, force the heart over to the left, by inflation of gas from\nthe stomach or by dead pressure upon the blood and nerves from any\nobstruction, and you get the sensation of being unable to lift the\nfeet from earth: a gasping sensation. Or force the heart to\nover-balance towards the right, and you get the sensation of flying or\nof falling. The heart telegraphs its distress to the mind, and wakes\nus. The wakeful soul at once begins to deal with the obstruction,\nwhich was too much for the mechanical night-circuits. The same holds\ngood of dreams of imprisonment, or of creeping through narrow\npassages. They are direct transfers from the squeezing of the blood\nthrough constricted arteries or heart chambers.\n\nMost dreams are stimulated from the blood into the nerves and the\nnerve-centers. And the heart is the transmission station. For the\nblood has a unity and a consciousness of its own. It has a deeper,\nelemental consciousness of the mechanical or material world. In the\nblood we have the body of our most elemental consciousness, our almost\nmaterial consciousness. And during sleep this material consciousness\ntransfers itself into the nerves and to the brain. The transfer in\nwakefulness results in a feeling of pain or discomfort--as when we\nhave indigestion, which is pure blood-discomfort. But in sleep the\ntransfer is made through the dream-images which are mechanical\nphenomena like mirages.\n\nNightmares which have purely mechanical images may terrify us, give us\na great shock, but the shock does not enter our souls. We are\nsurprised, in the morning, to find that the bristling horror of the\nnight seems now just nothing--dwindled to nothing. And this is because\nwhat was a purely material obstruction in the physical flow, temporary\nonly, is indeed a nothingness to the living, integral soul. We are\nsubject to such accidents--if we will eat pancakes for supper. And\nthat is the end of it.\n\nBut there are other dreams which linger and haunt the soul. These are\ntrue soul-dreams. As we know, life consists of reactions and\ninterrelations from the great centers of primary consciousness. I may\nstart a chain of connection from one center, which inevitably\nstimulates into activity the corresponding center. For example, I may\ndevelop a profound and passional love for my mother, in my days of\nadolescence. This starts, willy-nilly, the whole activity of adult\nlove at the lower centers. But admission is made only of the upper,\nspiritual love, the love dynamically polarized at the upper centers.\nNevertheless, whether the admission is made or not, once establish the\ncircuit in the upper or spiritual centers of adult love, and you will\nget a corresponding activity in the lower, passional centers of adult\nlove.\n\nThe activity at the lower center, however, is denied in the daytime.\nThere is a repression. Then the friction of the night-flow liberates\nthe repressed psychic activity explosively. And then the image of the\nmother figures in passionate, disturbing, soul-rending dreams.\n\nThe Freudians point to this as evidence of a repressed incest desire.\nThe Freudians are too simple. It is _always_ wrong to accept a\ndream-meaning at its face value. Sleep is the time when we are given\nover to the automatic processes of the inanimate universe. Let us not\nforget this. Dreams are automatic in their nature. The psyche\npossesses remarkably few dynamic images. In the case of the boy who\ndreams of his mother, we have the aroused but unattached sex plunging\nin sleep, causing a sort of obstruction. We have the image of the\nmother, the dynamic emotional image. And the automatism of the\ndream-process immediately unites the sex-sensation to the great stock\nimage, and produces an incest dream. But does this prove a repressed\nincest desire? On the contrary.\n\nThe truth is, every man has, the moment he awakes, a hatred of his\ndream, and a great desire to be free of the dream, free of the\npersistent mother-image or sister-image of the dream. It is a ghoul,\nit haunts his dreams, this image, with its hateful conclusions. And\nyet he cannot get free. As long as a man lives he may, in his dreams\nof passion or conflict, be haunted by the mother-image or\nsister-image, even when he knows that the cause of the disturbing\ndream is the wife. But even though the actual subject of the dream is\nthe wife, still, over and over again, for years, the dream-process\nwill persist in substituting the mother-image. It haunts and terrifies\na man.\n\nWhy does the dream-process act so? For two reasons. First, the reason\nof simple automatic continuance. The mother-image was the first great\nemotional image to be introduced in the psyche. The dream-process\nmechanically reproduces its stock image the moment the intense\nsympathy-emotion is aroused. Again, the mother-image refers only to\nthe upper plane. But the dream-process is mechanical in its logic.\nBecause the mother-image refers to the great dynamic stress of the\nupper plane, therefore it refers to the great dynamic stress of the\nlower. This is a piece of sheer automatic logic. The living soul is\n_not_ automatic, and automatic logic does not apply to it.\n\nBut for our second reason for the image. In becoming the object of\ngreat emotional stress for her son, the mother also becomes an object\nof poignancy, of anguish, of arrest, to her son. She arrests him from\nfinding his proper fulfillment on the sensual plane. Now it is almost\nalways the object of arrest which becomes impressed, as it were, upon\nthe psyche. A man very rarely has an image of a person with whom he is\nlivingly, vitally connected. He only has dream-images of the persons\nwho, in some way, _oppose_ his life-flow and his soul's freedom, and\nso become impressed upon his plasm as objects of resistance. Once a\nman is dynamically caught on the upper plane by mother or sister, then\nthe dream-image of mother or sister will persist until the dynamic\n_rapport_ between himself and his mother or sister is finally broken.\nAnd the dream-image from the upper plane will be automatically applied\nto the disturbance of the lower plane.\n\nBecause--and this is very important--the dream-process _loves_ its own\nautomatism. It would force everything to an automatic-logical\nconclusion in the psyche. But the living, wakeful psyche is so\nflexible and sensitive, it has a horror of automatism. While the soul\nreally lives, its deepest dread is perhaps the dread of automatism.\nFor automatism in life is a forestalling of the death process.\n\nThe living soul has its great fear. The living soul _fears_ the\nautomatically logical conclusion of incest. Hence the sleep-process\ninvariably draws this conclusion. The dream-process, fiendishly, plays\na triumph of automatism over us. But the dream-conclusion is almost\ninvariably just the _reverse_ of the soul's desire, in any\ndistress-dream. Popular dream-telling understood this, and pronounced\nthat you must read dreams backwards. Dream of a wedding, and it means\na funeral. Wish your friend well, and fear his death, and you will\ndream of his funeral. Every desire has its corresponding fear that the\ndesire shall not be fulfilled. It is _fear_ which forms an\narrest-point in the psyche, hence an image. So the dream automatically\nproduces the fear-image as the desire-image. If you secretly wished\nyour enemy dead, and feared he might flourish, the dream would present\nyou with his wedding.\n\nOf course this rule of inversion is too simple to hold good in all\ncases. Yet it is one of the most general rules for dreams, and applies\nmost often to desire-and-fear dreams of a psychic nature.\n\nSo that an incest-dream would not prove an incest-desire in the living\npsyche. Rather the contrary, a living fear of the automatic\nconclusion: the soul's just dread of automatism. And though this may\nsound like casuistry, I believe it does explain a good deal of the\ndream-trick.--That which is lovely to the automatic process is hateful\nto the spontaneous soul. The wakeful living soul fears automatism as\nit fears death: death being automatic.\n\nIt seems to me these are the first two dream-principles, and the two\nmost important: the principle of automatism and the principle of\ninversion. They will not resolve everything for us, but they will help\na great deal. We have to be _very_ wary of giving way to dreams. It is\nreally a sin against ourselves to prostitute the living spontaneous\nsoul to the tyranny of dreams, or of chance, or fortune or luck, or\nany of the processes of the automatic sphere.\n\nThen consider other dynamic dreams. First, the dream-image generally.\nAny _significant_ dream-image is usually an image or a symbol of some\narrest or scotch in the living spontaneous psyche. There is another\nprinciple. But if the image is a symbol, then the only safe way to\nexplain the symbol is to proceed from the quality of emotion\nconnected with the symbol.\n\nFor example, a man has a persistent passionate fear-dream about\nhorses. He suddenly finds himself among great, physical horses, which\nmay suddenly go wild. Their great bodies surge madly round him, they\nrear above him, threatening to destroy him. At any minute he may be\ntrampled down.\n\nNow a psychoanalyst will probably tell you off-hand that this is a\nfather-complex dream. Certain symbols seem to be put into complex\ncatalogues. But it is all too arbitrary.\n\nExamining the emotional reference we find that the feeling is sensual,\nthere is a great impression of the powerful, almost beautiful physical\nbodies of the horses, the nearness, the rounded haunches, the rearing.\nIs the dynamic passion in a horse the danger-passion? It is a great\nsensual reaction at the sacral ganglion, a reaction of intense,\nsensual, dominant volition. The horse which rears and kicks and neighs\nmadly acts from the intensely powerful sacral ganglion. But this\nintense activity from the sacral ganglion is male: the sacral ganglion\nis at its highest intensity in the male. So that the horse-dream\nrefers to some arrest in the deepest sensual activity in the male.\nThe horse is presented as an object of terror, which means that to the\nman's automatic dream-soul, which loves automatism, the great sensual\nmale activity is the greatest menace. The automatic pseudo-soul, which\nhas got the sensual nature repressed, would like to keep it repressed.\nWhereas the greatest desire of the living spontaneous soul is that\nthis very male sensual nature, represented as a menace, shall be\nactually accomplished in life. The spontaneous self is secretly\nyearning for the liberation and fulfillment of the deepest and most\npowerful sensual nature. There may be an element of father-complex.\nThe horse may also refer to the powerful sensual being in the father.\nThe dream may mean a love of the dreamer for the sensual male who is\nhis father. But it has nothing to do with _incest_. The love is\nprobably a just love.\n\nThe bull-dream is a curious reversal. In the bull the centers of power\nare in the breast and shoulders. The horns of the head are symbols of\nthis vast power in the upper self. The woman's fear of the bull is a\ngreat terror of the dynamic _upper_ centers in man. The bull's horns,\ninstead of being phallic, represent the enormous potency of the upper\ncenters. A woman whose most positive dynamism is in the breast and\nshoulders is fascinated by the bull. Her dream-fear of the bull and\nhis horns which may run into her may be reversed to a significance of\ndesire for connection, not from the centers of the lower, sensual\nself, but from the intense physical centers of the upper body: the\nphallus polarized from the upper centers, and directed towards the\ngreat breast center of the woman. Her wakeful fear is terror of the\ngreat breast-and-shoulder, _upper_ rage and power of man, which may\npierce her defenseless lower self. The terror and the desire are near\ntogether--and go with an admiration of the slender, abstracted bull\nloins.\n\nOther dream-fears, or strong dream-impressions, may be almost\nimageless. They may be a great terror, for example, of a purely\ngeometric figure--a figure from pure geometry, or an example of pure\nmathematics. Or they may have no image, but only a sensation of smell,\nor of color, or of sound.\n\nThese are the dream-fears of the soul which is falling out of human\nintegrity into the purely mechanical mode. If we idealize ourselves\nsufficiently, the spontaneous centers do at last work only, or almost\nonly, in the mechanical mode. They have no dynamic relation with\nanother being. They cannot have. Their whole power of dynamic\nrelationship is quenched. They act now in reference purely to the\nmechanical world, of force and matter, sensation and law. So that in\ndream-activity sensation or abstraction, abstract law or calculation\noccurs as the predominant or exclusive image. In the dream there may\nbe a sensation of admiration or delight. The waking sensation is fear.\nBecause the soul fears above all things its fall from individual\nintegrity into the mechanic activity of the outer world, which is the\nautomatic death-world.\n\nAnd this is our danger to-day. We tend, through deliberate idealism or\ndeliberate material purpose, to destroy the soul in its first nature\nof spontaneous, integral being, and to substitute the second nature,\nthe automatic nature of the mechanical universe. For this purpose we\nstay up late at night, and we rise late in the morning.\n\nTo stay up late into the night is always bad. Let us be as ideal as we\nmay, when the sun goes down the natural mode of life changes in us.\nThe mind changes its activity. As the soul gradually goes passive,\nbefore yielding up its sway, the mind falls into its second phase of\nactivity. It collects the results of the spent day into consciousness,\nlays down the honey of quiet thought, or the bitter-sweet honey of the\ngathered flower. It is the consciousness of that which is past.\nEvening is our time to read history and tragedy and romance--all of\nwhich are the utterance of that which is past, that which is over,\nthat which is finished, is concluded: either sweetly concluded, or\nbitterly. Evening is the time for this.\n\nBut evening is the time also for revelry, for drink, for passion.\nAlcohol enters the blood and acts as the sun's rays act. It inflames\ninto life, it liberates into energy and consciousness. But by a\nprocess of combustion. That life of the day which we have not lived,\nby means of sun-born alcohol we can now flare into sensation,\nconsciousness, energy and passion, and live it out. It is a liberation\nfrom the laws of idealism, a release from the restriction of control\nand fear. It is the blood bursting into consciousness. But naturally\nthe course of the liberated consciousness may be in either direction:\nsharper mental action, greater fervor of spiritual emotion, or deeper\nsensuality. Nowadays the last is becoming much more unusual.\n\nThe active mind-consciousness of the night is a form of\nretrospection, or else it is a form of impulsive exclamation, direct\nfrom the blood, and unbalanced. Because the active physical\nconsciousness of the night is the blood-consciousness, the most\nelemental form of consciousness. Vision is perhaps our highest form of\n_dynamic_ upper consciousness. But our deepest lower consciousness is\nblood-consciousness.\n\nAnd the dynamic lower centers are swayed from the blood. When the\nblood rouses into its night intensity, it naturally kindles first the\nlowest dynamic centers. It transfers its voice and its fire to the\ngreat hypogastric plexus, which governs, with the help of the sacral\nganglion, the flow of urine through us, but which also voices the deep\nswaying of the blood in sex passion. Sex is our deepest form of\nconsciousness. It is utterly non-ideal, non-mental. It is pure\nblood-consciousness. It is the basic consciousness of the blood, the\nnearest thing in us to pure material consciousness. It is the\nconsciousness of the night, when the soul is _almost_ asleep.\n\nThe blood-consciousness is the first and last knowledge of the living\nsoul: the depths. It is the soul acting in part only, speaking with\nits first hoarse half-voice. And blood-consciousness cannot operate\npurely until the soul has put off all its manifold degrees and forms\nof upper consciousness. As the self falls back into quiescence, it\ndraws itself from the brain, from the great nerve-centers, into the\nblood, where at last it will sleep. But as it draws and folds itself\nlivingly in the blood, at the dark and powerful hour, it sends out its\ngreat call. For even the blood is alone and in part, and needs an\nanswer. Like the waters of the Red Sea, the blood is divided in a dual\npolarity between the sexes. As the night falls and the consciousness\nsinks deeper, suddenly the blood is heard hoarsely calling. Suddenly\nthe deep centers of the sexual consciousness rouse to their\nspontaneous activity. Suddenly there is a deep circuit established\nbetween me and the woman. Suddenly the sea of blood which is me heaves\nand rushes towards the sea of blood which is her. There is a moment of\npure frictional crisis and contact of blood. And then all the blood in\nme ebbs back into its ways, transmuted, changed. And this is the\nprofound basis of my renewal, my deep blood renewal.\n\nAnd this has nothing to do with pretty faces or white skin or rosy\nbreasts or any of the rest of the trappings of sexual love. These\ntrappings belong to the day. Neither eyes nor hands nor mouth have\nanything to do with the final massive and dark collision of the blood\nin the sex crisis, when the strange flash of electric transmutation\npasses through the blood of the man and the blood of the woman. They\nfall apart and sleep in their transmutation.\n\nBut even in its profoundest, and most elemental movements, the soul is\nstill individual. Even in its most material consciousness, it is still\nintegral and individual. You would think the great blood-stream of\nmankind was one and homogeneous. And it is indeed more nearly one,\nmore near to homogeneity than anything else within us. The\nblood-stream of mankind is almost homogeneous.\n\nBut it isn't homogeneous. In the first place, it is dual in a perfect\ndark dynamic polarity, the sexual polarity. No getting away from the\nfact that the blood of woman is dynamically polarized in opposition,\nor in difference to the blood of man. The crisis of their contact in\nsex connection is the moment of establishment of a new flashing\ncircuit throughout the whole sea: the dark, burning red waters of our\nunder-world rocking in a new dynamic rhythm in each of us. And then in\nthe second place, the blood of an individual is his _own_ blood. That\nis, it is individual. And though we have a potential dynamic sexual\nconnection, we men, with almost every woman, yet the great outstanding\nfact of the individuality even of the blood makes us need a\ncorresponding individuality in the woman we are to embrace. The more\nindividual the man or woman, the more unsatisfactory is a\nnon-individual connection: promiscuity. The more individual, the more\ndoes our blood cry out for its own specific answer, an individual\nwoman, blood-polarized with us.\n\nWe have made the mistake of idealism again. We have thought that the\nwoman who thinks and talks as we do will be the blood-answer. And we\nforce it to be so. To our disaster. The woman who thinks and talks as\nwe do is almost sure to have no dynamic blood-polarity with us. The\ndynamic blood-polarity would make her different from me, and not like\nme in her thought mode. Blood-sympathy is so much deeper than\nthought-mode, that it may result in very different expression,\nverbally.\n\nWe have made the mistake of turning life inside out: of dragging the\nday-self into the night, and spreading the night-self over into the\nday. We have made love and sex a matter of seeing and hearing and of\nday-conscious manipulation. We have made men and women come together\non the grounds of this superficial likeness and commonalty--their\nmental, and upper sympathetic consciousness. And so we have forced the\nblood to submission. Which means we force it into disintegration.\n\nWe have too much light in the night, and too much sleep in the day. It\nis an evil thing for us to prolong as we do the mental, visual, ideal\nconsciousness far into the night when the hour has come for this upper\nconsciousness to fade, for the blood alone to know and to act. By\nprovoking the reaction of the great blood-stress, the sex-reaction,\nfrom the upper, outer mental consciousness and mental lasciviousness\nof conscious purpose, we thereby destroy the very blood in our bodies.\nWe prevent it from having its own dynamic sway. We prevent it from\ncoming to its own dynamic crisis and connection, from finding its own\nfundamental being. No matter how we work our sex, from the upper or\nouter consciousness, we don't achieve anything but the falsification\nand impoverishment of our own blood-life. We have no choice. Either we\nmust withdraw from interference, or slowly deteriorate.\n\nWe have made a corresponding mistake in sleeping on into the day.\nOnce the sun rises our constitution changes. Once the sun is well up\nour sleep--supposing our life fairly normal--is no longer truly sleep.\nWhen the sun comes up the centers of active dynamic upper\nconsciousness begin to wake. The blood changes its vibration and even\nits chemical constitution. And then we too ought to wake. We do\nourselves great damage by sleeping too long into the day. The\nhalf-hour's sleep after midday meal is a readjustment. But the long\nhours of morning sleep are just a damage. We submit our now active\ncenters of upper consciousness to the dominion of the blood-automatic\nflow. We chain ourselves down in our morning sleep. We transmute the\nmorning's blood-strength into false dreams and into an ever-increasing\nforce of inertia. And naturally, in the same line of inertia we\npersist from bad to worse.\n\nWith the result that our chained-down, active nerve-centers are\nhalf-shattered before we arise. We never become newly day-conscious,\nbecause we have subjected our powerful centers of day-consciousness to\nbe trampled and wasted into dreams and inertia by the heavy flow of\nthe blood-automatism in the morning sleeps. Then we arise with a\nfeeling of the monotony and automatism of life. There is no good,\nglad refreshing. We feel tired to start with. And so we protract our\nday-consciousness on into the night, when we _do_ at last begin to\ncome awake, and we tell ourselves we must sleep, sleep, sleep in the\nmorning and the daytime. It is better to sleep only six hours than to\nprolong sleep on and on when the sun has risen. Every man and woman\nshould be forced out of bed soon after the sun has risen: particularly\nthe nervous ones. And forced into physical activity. Soon after dawn\nthe vast majority of people should be hard at work. If not, they will\nsoon be nervously diseased.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV\n\nTHE LOWER SELF\n\n\nSo it comes about that the moon is the planet of our nights, as the\nsun of our days. And this is not just accidental, or even mechanical.\nThe influence of the moon upon the tides and upon us is not just an\naccident in phenomena. It is the result of the creation of the\nuniverse by life itself. It was life itself which threw the moon apart\non the one hand, the sun on the other. And it is life itself which\nkeeps the dynamic-vital relation constant between the moon and the\nliving individuals of the globe. The moon is as dependent upon the\nlife of individuals, for her continued existence, as each single\nindividual is dependent upon the moon.\n\nThe same with the sun. The sun sets and has his perfect polarity in\nthe life-circuit established between him and all living individuals.\nBreak that circuit, and the sun breaks. Without man, beasts,\nbutterflies, trees, toads, the sun would gutter out like a spent lamp.\nIt is the life-emission from individuals which feeds his burning and\nestablishes his sun-heart in its powerful equilibrium.\n\nThe same with the moon. She lives from us, primarily, and we from her.\nEverything is a question of relativity. Not only is every force\nrelative to other force or forces, but every existence is relative to\nother existences. Not only does the life of man depend on man, beast,\nand herb, but on the sun and moon, and the stars. And in another\nmanner, the existence of the moon depends absolutely on the life of\nherb, beast, and man. The existence of the moon depends upon the life\nof individuals, that which alone is original. Without the life of\nindividuals the moon would fall asunder. And the moon particularly,\nbecause she is polarized dynamically to this, our own earth. We do not\nknow what far-off life breathes between the stars and the sun. But our\nlife alone supports the moon. Just as the moon is the pole of our\nsingle terrestrial individuality.\n\nTherefore we must know that between the moon and each individual being\nexists a vital dynamic flow. The life of individuals depends directly\nupon the moon, just as the moon depends directly upon the life of\nindividuals.\n\nBut in what way does the life of individuals depend directly upon the\nmoon?\n\nThe moon is the mother of darkness. She is the clue to the active\ndarkness. And we, below the waist, we have our being in darkness.\nBelow the waist we are sightless. When, in the daytime, our life is\npolarized upwards, towards the open, sun-wakened eyes and the mind\nwhich sees in vision, then the powerful dynamic centers of the lower\nbody act in subservience, in their negative polarity. And then we flow\nupwards, we go forth seeking the universe, in vision, speech, and\nthought--we go forth to see all things, to hear all things, to know\nall things by acquaintance and by knowledge. One flood of dynamic flow\nare we, upwards polarized, in our tallness and our wide-eyed spirit\nseeking to bring all the universe into the range of our conscious\nindividuality, and eager always to make new worlds, out of this old\nworld, to bud new green tips on the tree of life. Just as a tree would\ndie if it were not making new green tips upon all its vast old world\nof a body, so the whole universe would perish if man and beast and\nherb were not always putting forth a newness: the toad taking a\nvivider color, spreading his hands a little more gently, developing a\nmore ruse intelligence, the birds adding a new note to their speech\nand song, a new sharp swerve to their flight, a new nicety to their\nnests; and man, making new worlds, new civilizations. If it were not\nfor this striving into new creation on the part of living individuals,\nthe universe would go dead, gradually, gradually and fall asunder.\nLike a tree that ceases to put forth new green tips, and to advance\nout a little further.\n\nBut each new tip arises out of the apparent death of the old, the\npreceding one. Old leaves have got to fall, old forms must die. And if\nmen must at certain periods fall into death in millions, why, so must\nthe leaves fall every single autumn. And dead leaves make good mold.\nAnd so dead men. Even dead men's souls.\n\nSo if death has to be the goal for a great number, then let it be so.\nIf America must invent this poison-gas, let her. When death is our\ngoal of goals we shall invent the means of death, let our professions\nof benevolence be what they will.\n\nBut this time, it seems to me, we have consciously and responsibly to\ncarry ourselves through the winter-period, the period of death and\ndenudation: that is, some of us have, some _nation_ even must. For\nthere are not now, as in the Roman times, any great reservoirs of\nenergetic barbaric life. Goths, Gauls, Germans, Slavs, Tartars. The\nworld is very full of people, but all fixed in civilizations of their\nown, and they all have all our vices, all our mechanisms, and all our\nmeans of destruction. This time, the leading civilization cannot die\nout as Greece, Rome, Persia died. It must suffer a great collapse,\nmaybe. But it must carry through all the collapse the living clue to\nthe next civilization. It's no good thinking we can leave it to China\nor Japan or India or Africa--any of the great swarms.\n\nAnd here we are, we don't look much like carrying through to a new\nera. What have we got that will carry through? The latest craze is Mr.\nEinstein's Relativity Theory. Curious that everybody catches fire at\nthe word Relativity. There must be something in the mere suggestion,\nwhich we have been waiting for. But what? As far as I can see,\nRelativity means, for the common amateur mind, that there is no one\nabsolute force in the physical universe, to which all other forces may\nbe referred. There is no one single absolute central principle\ngoverning the world. The great cosmic forces or mechanical principles\ncan only be known in their relation to one another, and can only exist\nin their relation to one another. But, says Einstein, this relation\nbetween the mechanical forces is constant, and may be expressed by a\nmathematical formula: which mathematical formula may be used to equate\nall mechanical forces of the universe.\n\nI hope that is not scientifically all wrong. It is what I understand\nof the Einstein theory. What I doubt is the equation formula. It seems\nto me, also, that the velocity of light through space is the _deus ex\nmachina_ in Einstein's physics. Somebody will some day put salt on the\ntail of light as it travels through space, and then its simple\nvelocity will split up into something complex, and the Relativity\nformula will fall to bits.--But I am a confirmed outsider, so I'll\nhold my tongue.\n\nAll I know is that people have got the word Relativity into their\nheads, and catch-words always refer to some latent idea or conception\nin the popular mind. It has taken a Jew to knock the last center-pin\nout of our ideally spinning universe. The Jewish intelligence for\ncenturies has been picking holes in our ideal system--scientific and\nsociological. Very good thing for us. Now Mr. Einstein, we are glad to\nsay, has pulled out the very axle pin. At least that is how the vulgar\nmind understands it. The equation formula doesn't count.--So now, the\nuniverse, according to the popular mind, can wobble about without\nbeing pinned down.--Really, an anarchical conclusion. But the Jewish\nmind insidiously drives us to anarchical conclusions. We are glad to\nbe driven from false, automatic fixities, anyhow. And once we are\ndriven right on to nihilism we may find a way through.\n\nSo, there is nothing absolute left in the universe. Nothing. Lord\nHaldane says pure knowledge is absolute. As far as it goes, no doubt.\nBut pure knowledge is only such a tiny bit of the universe, and always\nrelative to the thing known and to the knower.\n\nI feel inclined to Relativity myself. I think there is no one absolute\nprinciple in the universe. I think everything is relative. But I also\nfeel, most strongly, that in itself each individual living creature is\nabsolute: in its own being. And that all things in the universe are\njust relative to the individual living creature. And that individual\nliving creatures are relative to each other.\n\nAnd what about a goal? There is no final goal. But every step taken\nhas its own little relative goal. So what about the next step?\n\nWell, first and foremost, that every individual creature shall come to\nits own particular and individual fullness of being.--Very nice, very\npretty--but _how_? Well, through a living dynamic relation to other\ncreatures.--Very nice again, pretty little adjectives. But what _sort_\nof a living dynamic relation?--Well, _not_ the relation of love,\nthat's one thing, nor of brotherhood, nor equality. The next relation\nhas got to be a relationship of men towards men in a spirit of\nunfathomable trust and responsibility, service and leadership,\nobedience and pure authority. Men have got to choose their leaders,\nand obey them to the death. And it must be a system of culminating\naristocracy, society tapering like a pyramid to the supreme leader.\n\nAll of which sounds very distasteful at the moment. But upon all the\nvital lessons we have learned during our era of love and spirit and\ndemocracy we can found our new order.\n\nWe wanted to be all of a piece. And we couldn't bring it off. Because\nwe just _aren't_ all of a piece. We wanted first to have nothing but\nnice daytime selves, awfully nice and kind and refined. But it didn't\nwork. Because whether we want it or not, we've got night-time selves.\nAnd the most spiritual woman ever born or made has to perform her\nnatural functions just like anybody else. We must _always_ keep in\nline with this fact.\n\nWell, then, we have night-time selves. And the night-self is the very\nbasis of the dynamic self. The blood-consciousness and the\nblood-passion is the very source and origin of us. Not that we can\n_stay_ at the source. Nor even make a _goal_ of the source, as Freud\ndoes. The business of living is to travel away from the source. But\nyou must start every single day fresh from the source. You must rise\nevery day afresh out of the dark sea of the blood.\n\nWhen you go to sleep at night, you have to say: \"Here dies the man I\nam and know myself to be.\" And when you rise in the morning you have\nto say: \"Here rises an unknown quantity which is still myself.\"\n\nThe self which rises naked every morning out of the dark sleep of the\npassionate, hoarsely-calling blood: this is the unit for the next\nsociety. And the polarizing of the passionate blood in the individual\ntowards life, and towards leader, this must be the dynamic of the next\ncivilization. The intense, passionate yearning of the soul towards the\nsoul of a stronger, greater individual, and the passionate\nblood-belief in the fulfillment of this yearning will give men the\nnext motive for life.\n\nWe have to sink back into the darkness and the elemental consciousness\nof the blood. And from this rise again. But there is no rising until\nthe bath of darkness and extinction is accomplished.\n\nAs social units, as civilized men we have to do what we do as physical\norganisms. Every day, the sun sets from the sky, and darkness falls,\nand every day, when this happens, the tide of life turns in us.\nInstead of flowing upwards and outwards towards mental consciousness\nand activity, it turns back, to flow downwards. Downwards towards the\ndigestion processes, downwards further to the great sexual\nconjunctions, downwards to sleep.\n\nThis is the soul now retreating, back from the outer life of day, back\nto the origins. And so, it stays its hour at the first great sensual\nstations, the solar plexus and the lumbar ganglion. But the tide ebbs\non, down to the immense, almost inhuman passionate darkness of sex,\nthe strange and moon-like intensity of the hypogastric plexus and the\nsacral ganglion, then deep, deeper, past the last great station of the\ndarkest psyche, down to the earth's center. Then we sleep.\n\nAnd the moon is the tide-turner. The moon is the great cosmic pole\nwhich calls us back, back out of our day-self, back through the\nmoonlit darknesses of the sensual planes, to sleep. It is the moon\nthat sways the blood, and sways us back into the extinction of the\nblood.--And as the soul retreats back into the sea of its own\ndarkness, the mind, stage by stage, enjoys the mental consciousness\nthat belongs to this retreat back into the sensual deeps; and then it\ngoes extinguished. There is sleep.\n\nAnd so we resolve back towards our elementals. We dissolve back, out\nof the upper consciousness, out of mind and sight and speech, back,\ndown into the deep and massive, swaying consciousness of the dark,\nliving blood. At the last hour of sex I am no more than a powerful\nwave of mounting blood. Which seeks to surge and join with the\nanswering sea in the other individual. When the sea of individual\nblood which I am at that hour heaves and finds its pure contact with\nthe sea of individual blood which is the woman at that hour, then each\nof us enters into the wholeness of our deeper infinitude, our profound\nfullness of being, in the ocean of our oneness and our consciousness.\n\nThis is under the spell of the moon, of sea-born Aphrodite, mother and\nbitter goddess. For I am carried away from my sunny day-self into\nthis other tremendous self, where knowledge will not save me, but\nwhere I must obey as the sea obeys the tides. Yet however much I go, I\nknow that I am all the while myself, in my going.\n\nThis then is the duality of my day and my night being: a duality so\nbitter to an adolescent. For the adolescent thinks with shame and\nterror of his night. He would wish to have no night-self. But it is\nMoloch, and he cannot escape it.\n\nThe tree is born of its roots and its leaves. And we of our days and\nour nights. Without the night-consummation we are trees without roots.\n\nAnd the night-consummation takes place under the spell of the moon. It\nis one pure motion of meeting and oneing. But even so, it is a\ncircuit, not a straight line. One pure motion of meeting and oneing,\nuntil the flash breaks forth, when the two are one. And this, this\nflashing moment of the ignition of two seas of blood, this is the\nmoment of begetting. But the begetting of a child is less than the\nbegetting of the man and the woman. Woman is begotten of man at that\nmoment, into her greater self: and man is begotten of woman. This is\nthe main. And that which cannot be fulfilled, perfected in the two\nindividuals, that which cannot take fire into individual life, this\ntrickles down and is the seed of a new life, destined ultimately to\nfulfill that which the parents could not fulfill. So it is for ever.\n\nSex then is a polarization of the individual blood in man towards the\nindividual blood in woman. It is more, also. But in its prime\nfunctional reality it is this. And sex union means bringing into\nconnection the dynamic poles of sex in man and woman.\n\nIn sex we have our basic, most elemental being. Here we have our most\nelemental contact. It is from the hypogastric plexus and the sacral\nganglion that the dark forces of manhood and womanhood sparkle. From\nthe dark plexus of sympathy run out the acute, intense sympathetic\nvibrations direct to the corresponding pole. Or so it should be, in\ngenuine passionate love. There is no mental interference. There is\neven no interference of the upper centers. Love is supposed to be\nblind. Though modern love wears strong spectacles.\n\nBut love is really blind. Without sight or scent or hearing the\npowerful magnetic current vibrates from the hypogastric plexus in the\nfemale, vibrating on to the air like some intense wireless message.\nAnd there is immediate response from the sacral ganglion in some\nmale. And then sight and day-consciousness begin to fade. In the lower\nanimals apparently any male can receive the vibration of any female:\nand if need be, even across long distances of space. But the higher\nthe development the more individual the attunement. Every wireless\nstation can only receive those messages which are in its own vibration\nkey. So with sex in specialized individuals. From the powerful dynamic\ncenter the female sends out her dark summons, the intense dark\nvibration of sex. And according to her nature, she receives her\nresponses from the males. The male enters the magnetic field of the\nfemale. He vibrates helplessly in response. There is established at\nonce a dynamic circuit, more or less powerful. It would seem as if,\nwhile ever life remains free and wild and independent, the\nsex-circuit, while it lasts, is omnipotent. There is one electric flow\nwhich encompasses one male and one female, or one male and one\nparticular group of females all polarized in the same key of\nvibration.\n\nThis circuit of vital sex magnetism, at first loose and wide,\ngradually closes and becomes more powerful, contracts and grows more\nintense, until the two individuals arrive into contact. And even then\nthe pulse and flow of attraction and recoil varies. In free wild life,\neach touch brings about an intense recoil, and each recoil causes an\nintense sympathetic attraction. So goes on the strange battle of\ndesire, until the consummation is reached.\n\nIt is the precise parallel of what happens in a thunder-storm, when\nthe dynamic forces of the moon and the sun come into collision. The\nresult is threefold: first, the electric flash, then the birth of pure\nwater, new water.\n\nSo it is in sex relation. There is a threefold result. First, the\nflash of pure sensation and of real electricity. Then there is the\nbirth of an entirely new state of blood in each partner. And then\nthere is the liberation.\n\nBut the main thing, as in the thunder-storm, is the absolute renewal\nof the atmosphere: in this case, the blood. It would no doubt be found\nthat the electro-dynamic condition of the white and red corpuscles of\nthe blood was quite different after sex union, and that the chemical\ncomposition of the fluid of the blood was quite changed.\n\nAnd in this renewal lies the great magic of sex. The life of an\nindividual goes on apparently the same from day to day. But as a\nmatter of fact there is an inevitable electric accumulation in the\nnerves and the blood, an accumulation which weighs there and broods\nthere with intolerable pressure. And the only possible means of relief\nand renewal is in pure passional interchange. There is and must be a\npure passional interchange from the upper self, as when men unite in\nsome great creative or religious or constructive activity, or as when\nthey fight each other to the death. The great goal of creative or\nconstructive activity, or of heroic victory in fight, _must_ always be\nthe goal of the daytime self. But the very possibility of such a goal\narises out of the vivid dynamism of the conscious blood. And the blood\nin an individual finds its great renewal in a perfected sex circuit.\n\nA perfected sex circuit and a successful sex union. And there can be\nno successful sex union unless the greater hope of purposive,\nconstructive activity fires the soul of the man all the time: or the\nhope of passionate, purposive _destructive_ activity: the two amount\nreligiously to the same thing, within the individual. Sex as an end in\nitself is a disaster: a vice. But an ideal purpose which has no roots\nin the deep sea of passionate sex is a greater disaster still. And now\nwe have only these two things: sex as a fatal goal, which is the\nessential theme of modern tragedy: or ideal purpose as a deadly\nparasite. Sex passion as a goal in itself always leads to tragedy.\nThere must be the great purposive inspiration always present. But the\nautomatic ideal-purpose is not even a tragedy, it is a slow\nhumiliation and sterility.\n\nThe great thing is to keep the sexes pure. And by pure we don't mean\nan ideal sterile innocence and similarity between boy and girl. We\nmean pure maleness in a man, pure femaleness in a woman. Woman is\nreally polarized downwards, towards the center of the earth. Her deep\npositivity is in the downward flow, the moon-pull. And man is\npolarized upwards, towards the sun and the day's activity. Women and\nmen are dynamically different, in everything. Even in the mind, where\nwe seem to meet, we are really utter strangers. We may speak the same\nverbal language, men and women: as Turk and German might both speak\nLatin. But _whatever_ a man says, his meaning is something quite\ndifferent and changed when it passes through a woman's ears. And\nthough you reverse the sexual polarity, the flow between the sexes,\nstill the difference is the same. The _apparent_ mutual understanding,\nin companionship between a man and a woman, is always an illusion,\nand always breaks down in the end.\n\nWoman can polarize her consciousness upwards. She can obtain a hand\neven over her sex receptivity. She can divert even the electric spasm\nof coition into her upper consciousness: it was the trick which the\nsnake and the apple between them taught her. The snake, whose\nconsciousness is _only_ dynamic, and non-cerebral. The snake, who has\nno mental life, but only an intensely vivid dynamic mind, he envied\nthe human race its mental consciousness. And he knew, this intensely\nwise snake, that the one way to make humanity pay more than the price\nof mental consciousness was to pervert woman into mentality: to\nstimulate her into the upper flow of consciousness.\n\nFor the true polarity of consciousness in woman is downwards. Her\ndeepest consciousness is in the loins and belly. Even when perverted,\nit is so. The great flow of female consciousness is downwards, down to\nthe weight of the loins and round the circuit of the feet. Pervert\nthis, and make a false flow upwards, to the breast and head, and you\nget a race of \"intelligent\" women, delightful companions, tricky\ncourtesans, clever prostitutes, noble idealists, devoted friends,\ninteresting mistresses, efficient workers, brilliant managers, women\nas good as men at all the manly tricks: and better, because they are\nso very headlong once they go in for men's tricks. But then, after a\nwhile, pop it all goes. The moment woman has got man's ideals and\ntricks drilled into her, the moment she is competent in the manly\nworld--there's an end of it. She's had enough. She's had more than\nenough. She hates the thing she has embraced. She becomes absolutely\nperverse, and her one end is to prostitute herself and her ideals to\nsex. Which is her business at the present moment.\n\nWe bruise the serpent's head: his flat and brainless head. But his\nrevenge of bruising our heel is a good one. The heels, through which\nthe powerful downward circuit flows: these are bruised in us, numbed\nwith a horrible neurotic numbness. The dark strong flow that polarizes\nus to the earth's center is hampered, broken. We become flimsy fungoid\nbeings, with no roots and no hold in the earth, like mushrooms. The\nserpent has bruised our heel till we limp. The lame gods, the enslaved\ngods, the toiling limpers moaning for the woman. You don't find the\nsun and moon playing at pals in the sky. Their beams cross the great\ngulf which is between them.\n\nSo with man and woman. They must stand clear again. They must fight\ntheir way out of their self-consciousness: there is nothing else. Or,\nrather, each must fight the other out of self-consciousness. Instead\nof this leprous forbearance which we are taught to practice in our\nintimate relationships, there should be the most intense open\nantagonism. If your wife flirts with other men, and you don't like it,\nsay so before them all, before wife and man and all, say you won't\nhave it. If she seems to you false, in any circumstance, tell her so,\nangrily, furiously, and stop her. Never mind about being justified. If\nyou hate anything she does, turn on her in a fury. Harry her, and make\nher life a hell, so long as the real hot rage is in you. Don't\nsilently hate her, or silently forbear. It is such a dirty trick, so\nmean and ungenerous. If you feel a burning rage, turn on her and give\nit to her, and _never_ repent. It'll probably hurt you much more than\nit hurts her. But never repent for your real hot rages, whether\nthey're \"justifiable\" or not. If you care one sweet straw for the\nwoman, and if she makes you that you can't bear any more, give it to\nher, and if your heart weeps tears of blood afterwards, tell her\nyou're thankful she's got it for once, and you wish she had it worse.\n\nThe same with wives and their husbands. If a woman's husband gets on\nher nerves, she should fly at him. If she thinks him too sweet and\nsmarmy with other people, she should let him have it to his nose,\nstraight out. She should lead him a dog's life, and never swallow her\nbile.\n\nWith wife or husband, you should never swallow your bile. It makes you\ngo all wrong inside. Always let fly, tooth and nail, and never repent,\nno matter what sort of a figure you make.\n\nWe have a vice of love, of softness and sweetness and smarminess and\nintimacy and promiscuous kindness and all that sort of thing. We think\nit's so awfully nice of us to be like that, in ourselves. But in our\nwives or our husbands it gets on our nerves horribly. Yet we think it\noughtn't to, so we swallow our spleen.\n\nWe shouldn't. When Jesus said \"if thine eye offend thee, pluck it\nout,\" he was beside the point. The eye doesn't really offend us. We\nare rather fond of our own squint eye. It only offends the person who\ncares for us. And it's up to this person to pluck it out.\n\nThis holds particularly good of the love and intimacy vice. It'll\nnever offend us in ourselves. While it will be gall and wormwood to\nour wife or husband. And it is on this promiscuous love and intimacy\nand kindness and sweetness, all a vice, that our self-consciousness\nreally rests. If we are battered out of this, we shall be battered out\nof self-consciousness.\n\nAnd so, men, drive your wives, beat them out of their\nself-consciousness and their soft smarminess and good, lovely idea of\nthemselves. Absolutely tear their lovely opinion of themselves to\ntatters, and make them look a holy ridiculous sight in their own eyes.\nWives, do the same to your husbands.\n\nBut fight for your life, men. Fight your wife out of her own\nself-conscious preoccupation with herself. Batter her out of it till\nshe's stunned. Drive her back into her own true mode. Rip all her nice\nsuperimposed modern-woman and wonderful-creature garb off her. Reduce\nher once more to a naked Eve, and send the apple flying.\n\nMake her yield to her own real unconscious self, and absolutely stamp\non the self that she's got in her head. Drive her forcibly back, back\ninto her own true unconscious.\n\nAnd then you've got a harder thing still to do. Stop her from looking\non you as her \"lover.\" Cure her of that, if you haven't cured her\nbefore. Put the fear of the Lord into her that way. And make her know\nshe's got to believe in you again, and in the deep purpose you stand\nfor. But before you can do that, you've got to _stand_ for some deep\npurpose. It's no good faking one up. You won't take a woman in, not\nreally. Even when she _chooses_ to be taken in, for prettiness' sake,\nit won't do you any good.\n\nBut combat her. Combat her in her sexual pertinacity, and in her\nsecret glory or arrogance in the sexual goal. Combat her in her\ncock-sure belief that she \"knows\" and that she is \"right.\" Take it all\nout of her. Make her yield once more to the male leadership: if you've\ngot anywhere to lead to. If you haven't, best leave the woman alone;\nshe has _one_ goal of her own, anyhow, and it's better than your\nnullity and emptiness.\n\nYou've got to take a new resolution into your soul, and break off from\nthe old way. You've got to know that you're a man, and being a man\nmeans you must go on alone, ahead of the woman, to break a way through\nthe old world into the new. And you've got to be alone. And you've got\nto start off ahead. And if you don't know which direction to take,\nlook round for the man your heart will point out to you. And\nfollow--and never look back. Because if Lot's wife, looking back, was\nturned to a pillar of salt, these miserable men, for ever looking back\nto their women for guidance, they are miserable pillars of half-rotten\ntears.\n\nYou'll have to fight to make a woman believe in you as a real man, a\nreal pioneer. No man is a man unless to his woman he is a pioneer.\nYou'll have to fight still harder to make her yield her goal to yours:\nher night goal to your day goal. The moon, the planet of women, sways\nus back from our day-self, sways us back from our real social unison,\nsways us back, like a retreating tide, in a friction of criticism and\nseparation and social disintegration. That is woman's inevitable mode,\nlet her words be what they will. Her goal is the deep, sensual\nindividualism of secrecy and night-exclusiveness, hostile, with\nguarded doors. And you'll have to fight very hard to make a woman\nyield her goal to yours, to make her, in her own soul, _believe_ in\nyour goal as the goal beyond, in her goal as the way by which you go.\nShe'll never believe until you have your soul filled with a profound\nand absolutely inalterable purpose, that will yield to nothing, least\nof all to her. She'll never believe until, in your soul, you are cut\noff and gone ahead, into the dark.\n\nShe may of course already love you, and love you for yourself. But the\nlove will be a nest of scorpions unless it is overshadowed by a little\nfear or awe of your further purpose, a living _belief_ in your going\nbeyond her, into futurity.\n\nBut when once a woman _does_ believe in her man, in the pioneer which\nhe is, the pioneer who goes on ahead beyond her, into the darkness in\nfront, and who may be lost to her for ever in this darkness; when once\nshe knows the pain and beauty of this belief, knows that the\nloneliness of waiting and following is inevitable, that it must be so;\nah, then, how wonderful it is! How wonderful it is to come back to\nher, at evening, as she sits half in fear and waits! How good it is to\ncome home to her! How good it is then when the night falls! How richly\nthe evening passes! And then, for her, at last, all that she has lost\nduring the day to have it again between her arms, all that she has\nmissed, to have it poured out for her, and a richness and a wonder she\nhad never expected. It is her hour, her goal. That's what it is to\nhave a wife.\n\nAh, how good it is to come home to your wife when she _believes_ in\nyou and submits to your purpose that is beyond her. Then, how\nwonderful this nightfall is! How rich you feel, tired, with all the\nburden of the day in your veins, turning home! Then you too turn to\nyour other goal: to the splendor of darkness between her arms. And you\nknow the goal is there for you: how rich that feeling is. And you feel\nan unfathomable gratitude to the woman who loves you and believes in\nyour purpose and receives you into the magnificent dark gratification\nof her embrace. That's what it is to have a wife.\n\nBut no man ever had a wife unless he served a great predominant\npurpose. Otherwise, he has a lover, a mistress. No matter how much she\nmay be married to him, unless his days have a living purpose,\nconstructive or destructive, but a purpose beyond her and all she\nstands for; unless his days have this purpose, and his soul is really\ncommitted to his purpose, she will not be a wife, she will be only a\nmistress and he will be her lover.\n\nIf the man has no purpose for his days, then to the woman alone\nremains the goal of her nights: the great sex goal. And this goal is\nno goal, but always cries for the something beyond: for the rising in\nthe morning and the going forth beyond, the man disappearing ahead\ninto the distance of futurity, that which his purpose stands for, the\nfuture. The sex goal needs, absolutely needs, this further departure.\nAnd if there _be_ no further departure, no great way of belief on\nahead: and if sex is the starting point and the goal as well: then sex\nbecomes like the bottomless pit, insatiable. It demands at last the\ndeparture into death, the only available beyond. Like Carmen, or like\nAnna Karenina. When sex is the starting point and the returning point\nboth, then the only issue is death. Which is plain as a pike-staff in\n\"Carmen\" or \"Anna Karenina,\" and is the theme of almost _all_ modern\ntragedy. Our one hackneyed, hackneyed theme. Ecstasies and agonies of\nlove, and final passion of death. Death is the only pure, beautiful\nconclusion of a great passion. Lovers, pure lovers should say \"Let it\nbe so.\"\n\nAnd one is always tempted to say \"Let it be so.\" But no, let it be not\nso. Only I say this, let it be a great passion and then death, rather\nthan a false or faked purpose. Tolstoi said \"No\" to the passion and\nthe death conclusion. And then drew into the dreary issue of a false\nconclusion. His books were better than his life. Better the woman's\ngoal, sex and death, than some _false_ goal of man's.\n\nBetter Anna Karenina and Vronsky a thousand times than Natasha and\nthat porpoise of a Pierre. This pretty, slightly sordid couple tried\nso hard to kid themselves that the porpoise Pierre was puffing with\ngreat purpose. Better Vronsky than Tolstoi himself, in my mind. Better\nVronsky's final statement: \"As a soldier I am still some good. As a\nman I am a ruin\"--better that than Tolstoi and Tolstoi-ism and that\nbeastly peasant blouse the old man wore.\n\nBetter passion and death than any more of these \"isms.\" No more of the\nold purpose done up in aspic. Better passion and death.\n\nBut still--we _might_ live, mightn't we?\n\nFor heaven's sake answer plainly \"No,\" if you feel like it. No good\ntemporizing.\n\n\n\n\nEPILOGUE\n\n\n\"_Tutti i salmi finiscono in gloria._\"\n\nAll the psalms wind up with the Gloria.--\"As it was in the beginning,\nis now, and ever shall be, World without end. Amen.\"\n\nWell, then, Amen.\n\nI hope you say Amen! along with me, dear little reader: if there be\nany dear little reader who has got so far. If not, I say Amen! all by\nmyself.--But don't you think the show is all over. I've got another\nvolume up my sleeve, and after a year or two years, when I have shaken\nit down my sleeve, I shall bring it and lay it at the foot of your\nLiberty statue, oh Columbia, as I do this one.\n\nI suppose Columbia means the States.--\"Hail Columbia!\"--I suppose,\netymologically, it is a nest of turtle-doves, Lat. _columba_, a dove.\nCoo me softly, then, Columbia; don't roar me like the sucking doves of\nthe critics of my \"Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious.\"\n\nAnd when I lay this little book at the foot of the Liberty statue,\nthat brawny lady is not to look down her nose and bawl: \"Do you see\nany green in my eye?\" Of course I don't, dear lady. I only see the\nreflection of that torch--or is it a carrot?--which you are holding up\nto light the way into New York harbor. Well, many an ass has strayed\nacross the uneasy paddock of the Atlantic, to nibble your carrot, dear\nlady. And I must say, you can keep on slicing off nice little\ncarrot-slices of guineas and doubloons for an extraordinarily\ninexhaustible long time. And innumerable asses can collect themselves\nnice little heaps of golden carrot-slices, and then lift up their\nheads and brag over them with fairly pan-demoniac yells of\ngratification. Of course I don't see any green in your eye, dear\nLibertas, unless it is the smallest glint from the carrot-tips. The\ngleam in your eye is golden, oh Columbia!\n\nNevertheless, and in spite of all this, up trots this here little ass\nand makes you a nice present of this pretty book. You needn't sniff,\nand glance at your carrot-sceptre, lady Liberty. You needn't throw\ndown the thinnest carrot-paring you can pare off, and then say: \"Why\nshould I pay for this tripe, this wordy mass of rather revolting\nnonsense!\" You can't pay for it, darling. If I didn't make you a\npresent of it you could never buy it. So don't shake your\ncarrot-sceptre and feel supercilious. Here's a gift for you, Missis.\nYou can look in its mouth, too. Mind it doesn't bite you.--No, you\nneedn't bother to put your carrot behind your back, nobody wants to\nsnatch it.\n\nHow do you do, Columbia! Look, I brought you a posy: this nice little\nposy of words and wisdom which I made for you in the woods of\nEbersteinburg, on the borders of the Black Forest, near Baden Baden,\nin Germany, in this summer of scanty grace but nice weather. I made it\nspecially for you--Whitman, for whom I have an immense regard, says\n\"These States.\" I suppose I ought to say: \"Those States.\" If the\npublisher would let me, I'd dedicate this book to you, to \"Those\nStates.\" Because I wrote this book entirely for you, Columbia. You may\nnot take it as a compliment. You may even smell a tiny bit of\nSchwarzwald sap in it, and be finally disgusted. I admit that trees\nought to think twice before they flourish in such a disgraced place as\nthe Fatherland. \"_Chi va coi zoppi, all' anno zoppica._\" But you've\nnot only to gather ye rosebuds while ye may, but _where_ ye may. And\nso, as I said before, the Black Forest, etc.\n\nI know, Columbia, dear Libertas, you'll take my posy and put your\ncarrot aside for a minute, and smile, and say: \"I'm sure, Mr.\nLawrence, it is a _long_ time since I had such a perfectly beautiful\nbunch of ideas brought me.\" And I shall blush and look sheepish and\nsay: \"So glad you think so. I believe you'll find they'll keep fresh\nquite a long time, if you put them in water.\" Whereupon you, Columbia,\nwith real American gallantry: \"Oh, they'll keep for _ever_, Mr.\nLawrence. They _couldn't_ be so cruel as to go and die, such perfectly\nlovely-colored ideas. Lovely! Thank you ever, ever so much.\"\n\nJust think of it, Columbia, how pleased we shall be with one another:\nand how much nicer it will be than if you snorted \"High-falutin'\nNonsense\"--or \"Wordy mass of repulsive rubbish.\"\n\nWhen they were busy making Italy, and were just going to put it in\nthe oven to bake: that is, when Garibaldi and Vittorio Emmanuele had\nwon their victories at Caserta, Naples prepared to give them a\ntriumphant entry. So there sat the little king in his carriage: he had\nshort legs and huge swagger mustaches and a very big bump of\nphiloprogeniture. The town was all done up, in spite of the rain. And\ndown either side of the wide street were hasty statues of large,\nwell-fleshed ladies, each one holding up a fore-finger. We don't know\nwhat the king thought. But the staff held their breath. The king's\nappetite for strapping ladies was more than notorious, and naturally\nit looked as if Naples had done it on purpose.\n\nAs a matter of fact, the fore-finger meant _Italia Una_! \"Italy shall\nbe one.\" Ask Don Sturzo.\n\nNow you see how risky statues are. How many nice little asses and\npoets trot over the Atlantic and catch sight of Liberty holding up\nthis carrot of desire at arm's length, and fairly hear her say, as one\ndoes to one's pug dog, with a lump of sugar: \"Beg! Beg!\"--and \"Jump!\nJump, then!\" And each little ass and poodle begins to beg and to jump,\nand there's a rare game round about Liberty, zap, zap, zapperty-zap!\n\nDo lower the carrot, gentle Liberty, and let us talk nicely and\nsensibly. I don't like you as a _carotaia_, precious.\n\nTalking about the moon, it is thrilling to read the announcements of\nProfessor Pickering of Harvard, that it's almost a dead cert that\nthere's life on our satellite. It is almost as certain that there's\nlife on the moon as it is certain there is life on Mars. The professor\nbases his assertions on photographs--hundreds of photographs--of a\ncrater with a circumference of thirty-seven miles. I'm not satisfied.\nI demand to know the yards, feet and inches. You don't come it over me\nwith the triteness of these round numbers.\n\n\"Hundreds of photographic reproductions have proved irrefutably the\nspringing up at dawn, with an unbelievable rapidity, of vast fields of\nfoliage which come into blossom just as rapidly (sic!) and which\ndisappear in a maximum period of eleven days.\"--Again I'm not\nsatisfied. I want to know if they're cabbages, cress, mustard, or\nmarigolds or dandelions or daisies. Fields of foliage, mark you. And\n_blossom_! Come now, if you can get so far, Professor Pickering, you\nmight have a shrewd guess as to whether the blossoms are good to eat,\nor if they're purely for ornament.\n\nI am only waiting at last for an aeroplane to land on one of these\nfields of foliage and find a donkey grazing peacefully. Hee-haw!\n\n\"The plates moreover show that great blizzards, snow-storms, and\nvolcanic eruptions are also frequent.\" So no doubt the blossoms are\nedelweiss.\n\n\"We find,\" says the professor, \"a living world at our very doors where\nlife in some respects resembles that of Mars.\" All I can say is:\n\"Pray come in, Mr. Moony. And how is your cousin Signor Martian?\"\n\nNow I'm sure Professor Pickering's photographs and observations are\nreally wonderful. But his _explanations_! Come now, Columbia, where is\nyour High-falutin' Nonsense trumpet? Vast fields of foliage which\nspring up at dawn (!!!) and come into blossom just as quickly (!!!!)\nare rather too flowery even for my flowery soul. But there, truth is\nstranger than fiction.\n\nI'll bet my moon against the Professor's, anyhow.\n\nSo long, Columbia. _A riverderci._","title":"Fantasia of the Unconscious","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":62980}